Schedule operational activities
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 | 20 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Scheduling Work and Activities (4.A.2.b.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 20 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare project budgets, schedules, or specifications for labor or materials.
- Prepare, review, or maintain maintenance schedules, design documentation, or operational reports or charts.
- Schedule deliveries based on production forecasts, material substitutions, storage and handling facilities, and maintenance requirements.
- Prepare plans, estimates, design and construction schedules, and contract specifications, including any special provisions.
- Prepare schedules, reports, and estimates of the costs involved in developing and operating mines.
- Plan or schedule engineering research or development projects involving microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology.
- Review work plans to schedule activities.
- Prepare equipment inspection schedules, reliability schedules, work plans, or other records.
- Schedule programming or read television programming logs to determine which programs are to be recorded or aired.
- Arrange for commercial taping sessions, and accompany clients to sessions.
- Schedule and coordinate transfer and delivery of security certificates between companies, departments, and customers.
- Schedule space or equipment for special programs and prepare lists of participants.
- Schedule or dispatch workers, work crews, equipment, or service vehicles to appropriate locations, according to customer requests, specifications, or needs, using radios or telephones.
- Revise production schedules when required due to design changes, labor or material shortages, backlogs, or other interruptions, collaborating with management, marketing, sales, production, or engineering.
- Prepare agendas and make arrangements, such as coordinating catering for luncheons, for committee, board, and other meetings.
- Arrange conference, meeting, or travel reservations for office personnel.
- Plan work schedules and assign duties to maintain adequate staff for effective performance of activities and response to fluctuating workloads.
- Coordinate recycling collection schedules to optimize service and efficiency.
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
Step-by-step workflows that name this activity, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Others for scheduling, planning and resource control
Who does this work
20 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising Sales Agents
- Broadcast Technicians
- Brokerage Clerks
- Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance
- Electronics Engineers, Except Computer
- Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- First-Line Supervisors of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand
- Industrial Engineers
- Marine Engineers and Naval Architects
- Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Microsystems Engineers
- Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers
- Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks
- Receptionists and Information Clerks
- Recycling Coordinators
- Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs
- Transportation Engineers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Schedule operational 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.