Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1995-06-08
2001-02-20
MacDonald, Allen R. (Department: 2765)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C705S014270
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192346
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates generally to computerized systems and methods of planning, scheduling and managing vacations and holidays in a business environment.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Scheduling management systems for use in planning, scheduling and managing personnel are known in the prior art. Such systems typically include a basic scheduling capability to enable a business to forecast future needs and then allocates agent work hours according to the staffing requirements that have been forecast. Prior art vacation and holiday scheduling systems used with such scheduling management systems suffer from many disadvantages. Such systems rely on conventional time series forecasting techniques to generate forecasts for a large block or unit of time, e.g., a month. These techniques use fixed factors to decompose the monthly forecast into weekly, daily, and then hourly or smaller increments. This approach is computationally efficient but lends itself to accuracy only on a macro scale, e.g., month-to-month, as opposed to reflecting real changes in the business needs as they actually occur. Prior art systems thus do not have the flexibility to be responsive to changing conditions to forecast work loads and provide realistic scheduling of personnel to meet the dynamic requirements of the business.
Moreover, prior art systems are typically structured around a single business location, thus ignoring the needs of multi-site facilities. Another disadvantage associated with prior art approaches is with the inability of such systems to efficiently generate optimal work shifts for available agents when forecasting is complete. Further, these systems do not have the capability to efficiently generate schedules to satisfy agent preferences, availability and seniority. Thus, a need has arisen for a vacation scheduling system enabling the scheduling of agent vacations over a number of site locations and allowing all needs of a business to be efficiently met.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the foregoing and other problems with a vacation and holiday scheduling system. The vacation and holiday scheduling system of the present invention includes a variety of objects enabling a business to control and manage the scheduling of vacations and holidays by their employees. An administration object enables a user to set up the conditions and rules by which the vacation and holiday scheduling system will function. A plan object enables the determination of business unit and management unit staffing requirements for a particular business. These requirements are able to be downloaded from a remote force management system or may be generated locally. A calculate vacation days object enables the system to determine the number of vacation days which have been earned by each agent within a business unit. The agent information and vacation days calculated are displayed via a vacation profile object which gives complete information concerning the vacation requirements and selections of each employee. Finally, a bidding object allows employees of a business to access the vacation and holiday planning system and select available holiday and vacation periods on a seniority basis. An employee selects his/her name from an agent listing and is allowed access if each individual senior to him/her has already selected his/her vacation and holiday requirements. Upon entry and approval of a personal password, the employee may access selection utilities to assist in selecting preferred vacations and holidays.
The foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent aspects of the present invention. These aspects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the invention. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention as will be described. Accordingly, other aspects and a full understanding of the invention may be had by referring to the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment.
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patent: 5182705 (1993-01-01), Barr et al.
patent: 5289368 (1994-02-01), Jordan et al.
patent: 5557515 (1996-09-01), Abbruzzese et al.
Vacation: A Microcomputer Based Scheduling tool. Sujiit Das and Robert A. Whitaker, Apr. 26, 1987.
The Numbers approach to nursing Management. Hal Finlayson in Dimensions in Health, May 1976.
Vacation, A Microcomputer Based Scheduling Tool. Sujit Das and Robert A. Whittaker, Apr. 24, 1987.
Using microcomputer spreadsheets to teach industrial and labor relations applications. Jhon Lund, Labor Studies Journal, v20, n2, p22(16), Summer 1995.
Casino hits jackpot with employee scheduling software. Joy Cohan, Personal Journal Marketplace Supplement, pp: 8, May 1993.
Path Systems Release New Software To Administer Policies For Paid Time Off. Path Systems. Scotts Valley, CA. Jun. 9, 1988.
IEX Corporation
Irshadullah M.
Judson David H.
MacDonald Allen R.
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