Plan production or operational procedures or sequences
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can propose the plan, chase the replies and keep the record current. To actually change anything it needs write access to a calendar or work system, and a person still owns the tradeoffs when two plans collide.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Scheduling, planning and resource control |
| Jobs that do it | 17 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work (4.A.2.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 17 occupations that perform it.
- Develop plans for investigating alleged computer crimes, violations, or suspicious activity.
- Prepare work orders and instructions for grinding lenses and fabricating eyeglasses.
- Modify mixing, grouting, grinding, or cleaning procedures, according to type of installation or material used.
- Plan and establish work schedules, assignments, and production sequences to meet production goals.
- Read and interpret assembly blueprints or specifications manuals, and plan assembly or building operations.
- Determine work assignments and procedures.
- Plan sequences of operations, applying knowledge of physical properties of workpiece materials.
- Establish work procedures for fabricating new structural products, using a variety of metalworking machines.
- Read and interpret blueprints or drawings of parts to be cast or patterns to be made, compute dimensions, and plan operational sequences.
- Plan locations and sequences of cutting, drilling, bending, rolling, punching, and welding operations, using compasses, protractors, dividers, and rules.
- Divide patterns into sections according to shapes of castings to facilitate removal of patterns from molds.
- Develop or implement actions such as lockouts, tagouts, or clearances to allow equipment to be safely repaired.
- Prepare switching orders that will isolate work areas without causing power outages, referring to drawings of power systems.
- Develop operation, safety, and maintenance procedures or assist in their development.
- Plan movement of products through lines to processing, storage, and shipping units, using knowledge of system interconnections and capacities.
- Sort shop orders into groups to maximize materials utilization and minimize machine setup time.
- Examine freight to determine loading sequences.
- Determine standards, budgets, production goals, and rates, based on company policies, equipment and labor availability, and workloads.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for scheduling, planning and resource control, and what it costs.
Scheduling is a connector problem rather than an intelligence one, and $9 a month of Make covers both the calendar and the chasing. An agent platform priced per seat adds nothing you would notice here.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
17 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Programmers
- Cutting, Punching, and Press Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic
- Digital Forensics Analysts
- Engine and Other Machine Assemblers
- First-Line Supervisors of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand
- First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
- Layout Workers, Metal and Plastic
- Machinists
- Nuclear Power Reactor Operators
- Opticians, Dispensing
- Patternmakers, Metal and Plastic
- Patternmakers, Wood
- Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers
- Power Distributors and Dispatchers
- Stationary Engineers and Boiler Operators
- Team Assemblers
- Terrazzo Workers and Finishers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Plan work activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.