How LabScheduler Works

LabScheduler is easy to use and operates using the following step-by-step process:

The first step to using LabScheduler’s automatic scheduling capabilities, is to enter information about your laboratory’s technologists and workstations into the LabScheduler database. 

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Technologist information includes a roster of all technologists that work in the lab (or any group of employees to be tracked), as well as details about each person’s normal work shift, skills and skill levels. 

Workstation information includes a list of user-defined workstations, the sets of skills required at each, and the normal operating periods.A workstation may be a physical piece of equipment (“Cell Dyne 1”), a job description (“Receiving Window”), or a combination of these (“Vitros/Manuals”). This flexibility allows for shifts that require one person to cover multiple analyzers. For example, while a day shift might use a “Stat Vitros” workstation that specifies a particular analyzer, a weekend shift may use a “Weekend Chem” workstation that covers multiple chemistry analyzers or duties. You may also designate more than one technologist per workstation, or schedule technologists to work without assigning specific workstations, thus leaving them free to “roam” or “float” as needed.

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Standard Work Periods
Once each resource’s standard work period (normal work shift for a technologist, normal operating period for a workstation) has been defined, LabScheduler uses this information to suggest reasonable time intervals for creating new events for each resource. Defining a standard work period will not result in a particular technologist always working the same shift, or a particular workstation always running during the same time period. Before a schedule event is added, the user may change the date, time, duration, or event status. And even after the event has been added to the schedule, this information can still be edited at any time.

Skill Categories and Weights
To ensure that technologists are only assigned to workstations they are qualified to operate, LabScheduler supports the concept of skill categories. A technologist’s skill set determines which workstations he or she can operate. A workstation’s set of skill requirements determines which technologists can be assigned to it.

Technologists may have no skills, one skill, or many skills. Likewise, a workstation may require any number of skills. Each technologist is assigned a bench weight. Bench weight indicates an employee’s general priority as a scheduling resource. Employees with high bench weights are assigned to workstations before employees with lower bench weights. (Low bench weights are useful for scheduling supervisors and other key employees to “float” or “roam” during their shifts.)

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For each skill that a technologist possesses, you may specify a skill weight. A skill weight indicates the priority for the technologist to be scheduled at a workstation requiring that particular skill. By assigning a high skill weight, you can ensure that the individual will likely be automatically scheduled to cover a workstation that requires that skill. By assigning a low skill weight, you can guarantee that the individual will only be automatically scheduled to a workstation requiring that skill if no other qualified technologists are available.

Event Status and Weights
Each technologist or workstation schedule event has a status associated with it, and each event status carries a numerical weight (0-1) that determines how, or if, an event will be linked with a complementary schedule event. A standard schedule event—a technologist working at workstation, for example—would consist of a technologist event linked to a workstation event, with both events having an event weight of one. Statuses representing vacations, sick time, or equipment repairs would carry event weights of zero, which prevents LabScheduler from linking that event to another one.

If you want to schedule a technologist to be on-call, you can create an event status named “On-call” and give it a weight such as “0.5.” When you create a technologist schedule event for that person with a status of “On-call,” LabScheduler will only assign a workstation if no other qualified technologists are available.