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Permanent or Contract: Sizing a Roll Against a Seasonal Book

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A permanent head is the cheapest hour in the factory when it is busy and the dearest when it is not. The order book already says which it will be.

A Head, Either Way

What each kind of operator costs and delivers

After leave, absence and the working pattern - not the hours on the roster

Fully loaded and paid in every month, including the ones with no work

Including the contractor’s margin - paid only for hours worked

Standard minutes delivered per clock minute against a permanent operator at a hundred

Recruitment, induction and papers, charged for each head-month engaged

The Limits

What you cannot hire, and what not producing costs

A policy or statutory limit on the share of the work hired hands may produce

The contribution on work the cap will not let you cover

The Book, Month by Month

Standard hours of work in each month, which is the order book converted at the standard minute values rather than the pieces themselves - a month of simple styles is fewer hours than the same pieces of a tailored one. Twelve rows is the usual shape but any number works; the rule the sheet returns adjusts to the length of the book. Use the book you expect rather than the one you had, and if the season is genuinely uncertain, run it twice and see whether the answer moves.

MonthStandard Hours Needed hHeads This Month Alone no.Permanent Hours Used hPermanent Hours Idle hContract Hours hContract Heads no.Not Produced hThe Roll Is Fully Busy 1/0Row actions
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Add line opens a form. Cells in the sheet stay directly editable.

How to read this sheet

The rule is the part worth carrying out of this sheet. A permanent head costs a known sum over the book and its hours would cost a known sum on contract, and the ratio between them is the number of months it has to be occupied before employing beats hiring. Below that number, hire; above it, employ. It needs no software and it survives most of the arguments that are had instead, and the seeded factory needs a head busy for eight months of twelve. Charge contract productivity honestly, because it is the input that decides the answer and the one most often left at a hundred. A contract operator on a seasonal engagement is not slower because of who employs them; they are slower because they are new, on an unfamiliar style, and will be gone before they are quick. Seventy to eighty per cent is a fair figure for a garment line and the ramp-up sheets in this bundle will give you a better one. If you enter a hundred, this tool will tell you to hire everybody. Read the idle hours at the recommended roll as a feature rather than a fault. The right answer leaves permanent heads with nothing to do in the quiet months, because paying them through a trough is still cheaper than hiring through a peak - a roll with no idle hours at all is a roll that is too small, and a roll with none in any month is one you are paying for twice. What is not modelled. The book is taken as certain when the whole problem is that it is not; run the sheet against a bad season as well as a good one and size for the answer you can live with rather than the one you hope for. Nothing prices the industrial relations consequence of a small roll and a large contract force, which is real, is not linear, and in some states is the binding constraint rather than the statutory cap. Training and attrition are charged only as an engagement cost, so a factory whose contract force turns over within the month is under-charged here - the turnover sheet in this bundle prices that separately. And the cap is applied month by month, when most rules are written against an annual average.

Textile SchoolPermanent or Contract: Sizing a Roll Against a Seasonal Bookwww.textileschool.com
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