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Moving Hours Between Employee Trades

In many environments, an employee can perform work in two or more trades. This information is on the APM employee record.

Even in environments with multi-trade employees, (employees who can perform more than one trade), the employee is usually scheduled to work on only their primary trade. The employee can be scheduled to work on the alternate trade when there is a lack of work for their primary trade or when there is an excess of work in another trade.

Sometimes, a task might require two trades to complete it. In this case, you can assign the task to an employee who is competent in both trades. For example, Joe Smith is primarily a mechanic but is also qualified as a welder. You have a task that requires a mechanic for 4 hours and a welder for 1 hour. Rather than schedule two different people, you can assign the task to Mr. Smith.

When calculating trade availability, APM assumes that you are assigning work based on the trade shown on the employee’s work schedule. This is normally the employee’s primary trade. If an employee will be working on an alternate trade, you need to add this information to the work schedule. Then, APM can use the alternate trade when calculating the schedule’s availability. See below for an example:

APM uses the employee’s scheduled trade to show the initial availability to the schedule. However, you can move the availability between the employees’ different trades. In the above example, you could move 8 of Joe’s hours from mechanic to welder or you could move Jane’s 16 welder hours back to the mechanic trade. This allows you to use the available resources in the most efficient way possible.

To Move Hours Between Employee Trades

1.	Open the schedule.

2.	Make sure that editing is enabled.

3.	Select the Worksheet view and from any tab, click Show to view the Availability Summary graphs.

4.	In the Employee Availability chart, double-click a bar for the employee that you want to edit. The Employee Availability dialog appears.

5.	In the Employee’s Trades section, right-click a trade and select either Move availability from or Move availability to. The appropriate Move Availability dialog appears. For example:

6.	Select the trade that you want to add the hours to or move the hours from, in the Trade list, and then click OK. APM adjusts the hours as selected.

7.	Enter the number of hours that you want to move in the Availability to move box.

8.	To close the Employee Availability dialog, click OK. You can now assign tasks requiring that trade to the employee.