Openreach, a subsidiary of the BT Group, operates the fiber broadband infrastructure of the United Kingdom. The company offers phone, broadband and Ethernet services for residential, business, broadcasting and public service segments.
Openreach is installing the fiber network that connects tens of millions of subscribers in the UK. The company wanted a production planning tool to accelerate the network rollout.
Infosys developed a digital tool for Openreach to better plan and allocate resources, accurately forecast demand, and ensure optimal resource utilization.
Key Challenges
- Rudimentary production planning in a fluctuating demand scenario resulted in unpredictable resource availability
- Lack of an early warning system prevented triggering of alerts to counties with a deficit of resources
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The Solution
Production planning tool enables Openreach to sense and respond to the demand for engineers
Infosys developed a digital production planning tool to expedite the fiber network rollout across the UK. The planning-as-a-service model enabled Openreach planners to undertake accurate production planning based on the current and emerging workstack.
The advanced digital production planning tool aggregates data from workstack forecasting feeds, live workstack orchestrating systems, and the resource management system to offer a real-time and four weeks (on a rolling basis) view of workstack vs resource data.
The new production planning system allows Openreach planners to undertake resource planning based on the workstack and factor in a buffer for resource capacity. Significantly, the tool enables planners to allocate engineers to adjacent counties / regions based on demand forecasts and narrow the delta between peaks and troughs of the workstack.
Digital production planning tool enables real-time resource allocation
- Merges the live workstack and forecasted workstack with availability of engineers for the next four weeks (on a rolling basis).
- Offers a real-time view of peaks and troughs in demand
- Allows planners to allocate resources in response to fluctuating demand in the workstack
- Enables planners to give advance notice to patch managers for onboarding the required number of engineers
Benefits
Enabled production planning with a high degree of configurability based on geography and skillset
Facilitated real-time collaboration among planners to merge plans and address dynamic resource needs
