Purchase materials, equipment, or other resources
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 | 26 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Monitoring and Controlling Resources (4.A.4.c.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 26 occupations that perform it.
- Acquire, distribute and store supplies.
- Purchase security-related supplies, equipment, or technology.
- Purchase necessary equipment.
- Inspect physical conditions of warehouses, vehicle fleets, or equipment and order testing, maintenance, repairs, or replacements.
- Obtain financing for and purchase necessary machinery, land, supplies, or livestock.
- Requisition supplies or materials to complete construction projects.
- Perform administrative functions, such as reviewing or writing reports, approving expenditures, enforcing rules, or purchasing of materials or services.
- Order and purchase equipment and supplies.
- Purchase supplies, and arrange for outside services, such as deliveries, laundry, maintenance and repair, and trash collection.
- Order drugs or devices necessary for study completion.
- Purchase building and maintenance supplies, equipment, or furniture.
- Order parts, tools, or equipment needed to maintain, restore, or improve wind field operations.
- Request bids from suppliers or consultants.
- Purchase equipment, materials, or parts.
- Procure materials needed to repair marine equipment and machinery.
- Review or negotiate energy purchase agreements.
- Identify, procure, or develop test equipment, instrumentation, or facilities for characterization of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) applications.
- Select, purchase, set up, operate, or troubleshoot state-of-the-art laser cutting equipment.
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
26 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Administrative Services Managers
- Architectural and Engineering Managers
- Automotive Engineering Technicians
- Clinical Research Coordinators
- Computer and Information Systems Managers
- Construction Managers
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Energy Engineers, Except Wind and Solar
- Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Environmental Engineers
- Facilities Managers
- Farm and Home Management Educators
- Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers
- Food Service Managers
- Foresters
- Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Lodging Managers
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Marine Engineers and Naval Architects
- Microsystems Engineers
- Photonics Engineers
- Photonics Technicians
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- Security Managers
- Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
- Wind Energy Operations Managers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Purchase goods or services”. 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.