A current-state exhibit from a capacity planning engagement, told as the GM's week: the schedule built Sunday night from last year's gut feel, the client promo that landed Wednesday with no warning, and the premium hours bought Friday afternoon to protect ship SLAs.
Overtime is not the problem here. It is the shock absorber for a missing forecast. Client order files arrive every week with real volumes, and nobody converts them into labor hours. So the schedule is built from last year plus instinct, the week does whatever it wants, and the gap gets closed with premium hours on Friday. The GM eats the blame; the finance lead sees the premium only after it is spent.
Both series are labor hours per day on the warehouse floor. Demand is what the client order files implied, converted after the fact; staffed hours are what the Sunday-night schedule actually put on the floor. Capacity stays flat all week. Demand does not. The red overage is the gap, and the gap is what gets bought back at 1.5x.
| Day | Order volume (labor hrs) | Staffed hrs | Hours over capacity | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 325 | 340 | 0 | Schedule from Sunday night holds. 15 spare hours that cannot be banked for Friday. |
| Tuesday | 330 | 340 | 0 | Still fine. Nobody has opened this week's client order files as labor hours. |
| Wednesday | 385 | 340 | 45 | A brand client's promo goes live. First anyone on the floor hears of it is the order feed. |
| Thursday | 450 | 340 | 110 | Pick lines fall behind. Backlog rolls into Friday. |
| Friday | 505 | 340 | 165 | The scramble. Premium hours bought at 1.5x to protect ship SLAs. |
| Saturday | 150 | 170 | 0 | Skeleton crew clears the residue. |
| Sunday | 0 | 0 | 0 | Closed. The next schedule gets built tonight, from last year plus instinct. |
| Week | 2,145 | 1,870 | 320 | The over-capacity total matches the prior quarter's weekly overtime average. |
Illustrative week, constructed to match the client's prior-quarter operating pattern: about 320 overtime hours per week, roughly 85% of it reactive. Hover or tab across the days for exact values; the table carries the same numbers. The point reads in one glance: capacity is flat because the schedule was set before the week was known. Demand is not flat, and the difference is paid for at a premium.
This is the process that currently decides 85% of overtime. It has no owner, no price check, and no memory. It runs on whoever says yes.
First shift walks in to Thursday's unpicked lines. Wednesday's promo volume is now Friday's emergency.
Found 2 days lateSupervisors go line to line asking who can stay tonight. No rotation, no list. Just whoever says yes.
Volunteer rouletteToo late for same-day coverage. The agency needs 48 hours of notice the operation never gives it.
48 hrs too lateAbout 165 hours approved in a hallway to protect ship SLAs. Finance finds out on the payroll run.
165 hrs at 1.5xTrucks make the cutoff. The SLA holds. The crew that opened the building at 6:00 closes it at 7:30.
13.5-hour dayThe yes-sayers are always the same 15 names. Two of their coworkers quit last year citing Friday surprises.
Concentrated burnoutAbout 4,160 overtime hours at an illustrative fully-loaded OT rate of $33/hour. Only ~15% of it was chosen in advance; the rest was bought under Friday pressure, at the worst possible negotiating position: 4:00 pm, trucks at 8:00.
Exit interviews said the same thing: "every Friday is a surprise." Both came from the group of 15 that always says yes. Recruiting, hiring, and retraining costs sit on top of the OT line, in a different budget, invisible to this conversation until someone adds them up.
The fix is not banning overtime. It is deciding it on Monday instead of begging for it on Friday. The same 165 hours, chosen four days earlier at chosen crews, is a plan with a price tag. Chosen at 4:00 pm under a truck deadline, it is a tax. The next exhibit shows the model that moves the decision.
A volume forecast the GM can read, measured labor standards for the six core activities, and a one-page weekly plan: forecast units to required hours to scheduled hours to planned overtime, set in a 30-minute Monday meeting and reviewed every Friday.