Before commissioning
Bring operations, the study provider, the implementation team and the data owner into one design discussion. Agree the target hierarchy, activity grain, units and who owns shared work.
EXPERIMENT 03 / THE IMPLEMENTATION GAP
The study is done.
Can the system use it?
A time-and-motion study can measure the work accurately and still need changes before it can support a labour forecast. The missing conversation is often about how that work will fit the system.
Explore the mismatch ↓FROM MY IMPLEMENTATION EXPERIENCE
Design the handover
before the stopwatch starts.
In my project experience, a study organised around store departments X, Y and Z does not always fit the structure being created for labour forecasting. When those two designs are developed separately, the client can face extra work—and potentially extra fees—to reshape or rebuild the labour model.
The question I want teams to ask early is: “Can we take one measured task, connect it to the right demand data, and produce a useful forecast in the proposed structure?”
Experience-led perspective · the store, tasks and costs below are illustrative, not a client case study.01 / SAME STORE. TWO WAYS TO ORGANISE WORK.
Where does the work go?
Change the target structure or the mapping approach. Watch what happens to the same 15 hours of measured work.
THE STUDY’S STRUCTURE
THE FORECAST’S STRUCTURE
Measured at store level15.0 h
Assigned to system nodes
Assigned to the wrong node
Still unassigned
Reference hours show the underlying activity split in this synthetic example. Department totals can balance while individual functions are wrong. This is a mapping demonstration, not a live system configuration or a forecast of a real store.
What did the handover include?
Toggle the evidence available in this scenario. These switches change the example; they do not create missing data.
WHAT I WOULD INVESTIGATE
Open the underlying task and driver example
| Study department | Activity | Demand unit | Daily volume | Seconds / unit | Hours |
|---|
Combining departments can work if activity rules and drivers remain distinct. A carton-based standard and a transaction-based standard cannot simply be averaged into one time per “unit”. Splitting a department needs evidence of the activities and who performs them.
02 / THE COST OF FINDING OUT LATE
The second bill
nobody planned for.
If the handover does not fit, what would it cost to correct it? Start with the evidence you can reuse.
Scope the extra work.
Editable examples in AUD, excluding GST. Rates and effort are hypothetical, not quotes. Model count means distinct models needing changes, not every store using a shared model.
POTENTIAL ADDITIONAL VENDOR FEES
Where the extra spend goes.
Client-team time is shown separately from vendor fees. Do not add it again if already included in your project budget or a vendor’s scope.
These are conditional project costs, separate from annual employee labour costs ↗. Changing a switch in the mapping example does not automatically trigger a fee or prove that a new study is required. Commercial scope and responsibility need to be agreed.
How the rework estimate is calculated
Design, configuration and validation: affected models × hours per model × consultant hourly rate. Data/interface work: total project hours × consultant hourly rate, counted once. Site observation: revisited sites × days per site × study-provider daily rate. Contingency applies to those external fees only. Internal effort: client-team hours × internal hourly cost, shown separately.
The original study fee, travel, GST, schedule slippage and ongoing payroll effects are excluded. Repeated observation should be scoped only where existing evidence cannot answer the revised model’s questions.
03 / AGREE THE HANDOVER
Prove one path through
before studying every store.
During the pilot
Carry one task from raw observation to standard, source volume, system function and interval forecast. Reconcile both the store total and the allocation by job or function.
Before accepting delivery
Retain raw activity data, assumptions, mappings and acceptance results. Agree version ownership and the change process when the business structure or source data changes.
A CONVERSATION WORTH HAVING EARLY
Who owns the fit between the study and the system?
Use this example to discuss the handover with your study provider and implementation team.