What is rostering?
Rostering is the final step of the scheduling process, combining (daily) driver duties to create weekly “packages” of daily driver (operator) duties called Rosters or Rotas.
The rostering process is a balancing act, balancing transit operators’ desire to minimize labor costs while maintaining high driver satisfaction. On top of driver satisfaction (operator turnover is a challenge throughout the industry), rosters need to adhere to labor agreement requirements, such as maximum work hours, number of days worked, rest breaks, days off and company practices.
Many existing tools only provide basic automation to support the rostering process (or, sometimes, no automation and no optimization at all). The result is a lot of manual effort as far as schedulers are concerned and less than optimal results from an operational standpoint.
The Optibus Roster is designed to help you create efficient and quality rosters that meet your unique requirements, at a fraction of the time.
Moving to a new design
The previous Optibus roster design was based on the Gantt view – which is very efficient for crew and vehicle scheduling – but wasn’t ideal for rostering.
We wanted to design a user interface that will show all relevant driver duty information, as well as provide a smooth and intuitive experience. We also focused on being able to quickly get quality results, whether you are optimizing or using manual editing
The previous Optibus roster design was based on the Gantt view – which is very efficient for crew and vehicle scheduling – but wasn’t ideal for rostering.
We wanted to design a user interface that will show all relevant driver duty information, as well as provide a smooth and intuitive experience. We also focused on being able to quickly get quality results, whether you are optimizing or using manual editing.
The result is a new calendar-based design, allowing you to quickly visualize a summary of each roster and to tweak your rosters in just one or two clicks.
The new design is centered around “cards” which show drivers’ relevant duty information, where daily duty assignments can be viewed by key information (e.g., duty type, duty id, duration), with more information available at an additional click.
Roster statistics are available on the left hand side, enabling you to evaluate each roster and understand if any adjustments are needed.
Unassigned duties are placed within reach on the right hand side, with filtering capabilities.
The new design also allows you to control the size of your working area to fit your needs, with a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes.
The above video shows how you can view roster stats, duty information and the unassigned duties list.
Manual editing is now quick and easy, to complement our advanced optimization; just hover over a day or roster line for any action, from moving a duty, to replacing it or reordering rosters. Want to assign a duty? Hover over the relevant day and select a duty to assign – It’s that easy.
The above video shows how easy it is to perform manual edits.
Summary
We invested a lot of thought into creating a roster module that delivers roster optimization and editing (if needed) simply and easily, with sleek design and, as usual, our advanced optimization technology under the hood.
For a demo, click here.
