Work Assignment

This page is accessed via Fleet Management > Resource Management > Work Assignment.

A work assignment is a collection of shipments strung together to form a unit of work. Each work assignment is associated with a resource schedule instance and it occupies one of the counts associated with the resource schedule instance. A resource schedule instance can be a group of resources, such as drivers, that have similar work hours starting on a particular day (i.e. shift) and the same start and end locations, so a work assignment represents the work that could be performed by one of these resources, during that shift. A work assignment is not associated with a specific resource; it represents the work that any one of the resources modeled by the resource schedule instance could perform.

Work assignments are created via the Create Work Assignment action on a shipment, or by the Create Work Assignment action on a resource schedule instance. For particulars on the creation process, also see Fleet and Bulk Planning.

Viewing a Work Assignment

Click on the Status button to see the current statuses for the work assignment. You can change certain statuses using the Change Status action. The following fields are calculated in this manner:

• Start Time: Start time from the shipment associated with the work assignment details with the lowest sequence number.
• End Time: End time from the shipment associated with the work assignment details with the highest sequence number.
• Duration: End time minus the start time.

There are various statuses available for work assignments.

Upon creation a work assignment will have the status value WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT_UNASSIGNED. When one or more shipments on a work assignment are assigned to a driver (via an action, e.g. shipment action, driver action, or work assignment action)  the status value will be set to WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT_ASSIGNED. Note that assigning a driver to a work assignment shipment will also result in the WA_CALCULATE status type getting set to the status value WA_CALCULATE_NEEDED, and although it is in this status there are no actions that can be performed on the work assignment to change it to WA_CALCULATE_CALCULATED status while a driver is still assigned to one or more of the shipments.

The work assignment will also be set back to unassigned status (WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT_UNASSIGNED) if all shipments associated with the work assignment are unassigned from a driver(s), but the work assignment will remain in WA_CALCULATE_NEEDED status. At this point normal actions can once again be performed on the work assignment, and the work assignment will be set back to WA_CALCULATE_CALCULATED if a recalculating action (e.g. recalculate, add shipment, delete shipment, re-sequence shipments, etc.) is performed on the work assignment.

Only if all shipments are unassigned from their driver(s) and the WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT status is set back to WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT_UNASSIGNED can work assignment actions be performed to recalculate and set the status to WA_CALCULATE_CALCULATED. When a work assignment is in WA_DRIVER_ASSIGNMENT_ASSIGNED status, only the Remove Shipment, Disband Work Assignment, and Change Status actions are allowed for the work assignment.

The status is set to a value of WA_CALCULATE_CALCULATED whenever a re-rate and re-drive of the work assignment is performed. This includes the creation of a work assignment via bulk plan or manual actions, as well as any manual work assignment actions.

The status value is set to WA_CALCULATE_NEEDED whenever a non-work assignment action is performed that impacts the start/end time of a shipment that is on a work assignment. This could be a non-work assignment action performed directly on a work assignment shipment, or an action performed on a shipment upstream from the work assignment shipment that has impacted the work assignment shipment via a re-drive downstream freight-related shipments.

Note that when the status is set to WA_CALCULATE_NEEDED it is an indication that at least one shipment on the work assignment has changed and no automatic re-drive and re-rate of the work assignment has occurred. The status is an indication to the user that the WA needs attention. Performing any work assignment action on the work assignment will result in a work assignment re-drive and re-rate and set the status back to WA_CALCULATE_CALCULATED.

Calculated

This section displays calculated data for the work assignment, such as transit duration and distance. These fields are calculated in the following way:

• Slack Duration: Sum of the extra time added between shipments in order to link one or more shipments together from all of the shipments in the work assignment. Does not include drive time; only unused wait time.
• Wait Duration: Sum of the wait time from the shipment stops for all of the shipment stops on all of the shipments in the work assignment.
• Transit Duration: All moving transit time from all shipments on the work assignment.
• Empty Transit Duration: Sum of moving transit time while the vehicle is empty, for all shipments in the work assignment.
• Activity Duration: Sum of all the activity times on stops for all the shipments in the work assignment.
• Rest Duration: Sum of the rests taken during the entire duration of the work assignment.
• Between Shipment Rest Duration: Sum of the rest durations that occur during the work assignment but is not represented against any of the associated shipments.
• Distance: Total distance traveled during the work assignment.
• Empty Distance: Sum of the non-loaded miles within the work assignment.

Shipments

This section displays the shipments associated with the work assignment. You can click the Details button for each shipment to see details of each shipment on the work assignment, and its calculated fields.