This application component allows you to accurately determine and schedule the appropriate number and type of human resources required for your enterprise to carry out business requirements.

Unlike other types of resource planning for materials, machines and vehicles, human resources planning involves a unique set of requirements. Personnel administrators face problems and issues that are extremely time consuming and cost intensive to deal with without computer support.

The Shift Planning component allows you to distribute your human resources quickly and efficiently, and ensures that an enterprise’s capacity is used to the full extent. You can assign shift time, shift location, selection and number of required employees so that your personnel capacity is utilized to its maximum effect.

You can schedule and create working hours for your employees in a flexible manner to cover requirements. You can also create time data for any number of employees at the same time, as well as for one or more days, weeks or even months.

Shift Planning is a component of SAP Time Management. A permanent exchange of data between the Human Resources and Personnel Management components ensures that the following data is always available:

• Changes relevant to planning in Time Data Recording and Administration
• Changes relevant to planning in Time Evaluation
• Changes relevant to accounting in Shift Planning

In this way, the probability of planning errors, such as those that occur when manually transferring data, can be minimized. The permanent availability of all current time information allows you to create an optimal shift plan as you take into consideration all personnel and time-related data for the relevant planning period.

The SAP Shift Planning component offers a wide variety of user-friendly tools for creating detailed shift plans with a high degree of accuracy, while saving valuable time and costs.

The many functions in SAP Shift Planning include:

• Using entry object types to start shift planning, such as an entry object type for an organizational unit. This provides a high level of flexibility when selecting the required employees from the entire personnel capacity of your enterprise
• Detailed definitions of requirements for an accurate determination of required resources
• Target and Actual Plans that detail short- and long-term availability, and employee working time
• Requirements Matchup, to recognize:

• If personnel requirements are already covered
• If employees are already scheduled
• If employees are still available to cover requirements
• When to make changes to the shift plan

• Day View, to comprehensively display and edit a shift plan one day at a time. This function provides for extremely detailed planning, especially when you are assigning shifts for only part of a day
• Employee preferences taken into account for working times
• Simulated time evaluation, by choosing Check shift plan. Thus, working time regulations, for example, can be checked without having to save the shift plans first. You can respond to any irregularities that might occur in the shift plan as you enter data. Simulation provides an overview of whether the work quota of an employee is already fully utilized, and in which areas. In this way, you can react accordingly should a capacity bottleneck occur.