Workforce Planning with Workday Adaptive Planning for Manufacturing

Workforce planning in manufacturing is inherently complex, with decentralized teams, varied benefit structures and evolving operational demands.

Through our work deploying and optimizing Workday Adaptive Planning, we’ve identified common challenges that can impact success, especially in global manufacturing environments.

Here are five key lessons to help you streamline workforce planning, improve alignment and drive more value from Workday Adaptive Planning.

# 1 |   Align decentralized planning across global teams early

One significant hurdle in deploying a Workday Workforce Planning model for a multinational manufacturing company is that many customers leverage decentralized planning across their international business segments.

This complexity arises from the existence of different sets of benefits assumptions, planning in local currencies, and constant currency and foreign exchange reporting.

One major key to success in international decentralized planning for these types of customers lies in consolidating top-down planning and benefits requirements across locations as early as possible. By addressing discrepancies and unifying planning objectives in the initial stages of a project, companies can minimize delays and optimize resource allocation. 

# 2 |      Prioritize change management for a  global adoption 

Workday Workforce Planning involves collaboration between the Global Leadership and local finance leaders to determine planning requirements. Aligning on a standardized planning process across countries and managing changes efficiently is crucial for ensuring smooth operations. The key lies in striking the right balance between a consistent planning approach and addressing specific country-level needs.

Involve planners early in the deployment process to drive adoption.

Providing Proof-of-Concept demos during the Initiate stage helps users become familiar with the system and builds confidence. This approach facilitates smoother onboarding and faster integration into the planning ecosystem. 

# 3 |    Manage complex security with dimensional access rules

 Manufacturing organizations often require highly granular security due to complex structures across projects, products and locations.

For many customers, these dimensions require specific security configurations to control access at a granular level. Ensuring the right individuals have appropriate access to sensitive data is a critical concern. This complexity calls for robust security measures to safeguard sensitive information while enabling the necessary collaboration and planning activities.

Workday Adaptive Planning offers a powerful security engine through access rules and associations, enabling companies to define access controls at different levels and locations. By leveraging these capabilities, manufacturing organizations can enforce data security without hindering collaboration, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected. 

# 4 |    Standardize level structure across locations

 To accommodate various financial aspects like currency conversion, reporting, and planning requirements, it is essential to prioritize alignment on the Adaptive Planning level structure design across all locations. By establishing a uniform framework, manufacturing companies can streamline planning processes, facilitate meaningful cross-location comparisons, and derive valuable insights for better decision-making. 

# 5 |    Ensure reliable workforce planning data 

Clean and accurate data is the backbone of effective workforce planning in Workday. Manufacturing companies must emphasize data cleanup initiatives, ensuring that the information used for planning is reliable and free from errors. This process involves periodic data audits and implementing data quality measures. 

Workforce Planning in the manufacturing industry presents unique challenges that require careful consideration and strategic solutions. Deployment consultants can streamline the process and set the customer up for success by utilizing many of Workday Adaptive Planning’s powerful tools, and by strategically involving customer resources to ensure alignment across the organization.  

Sometimes seeing things in practice helps. Read how Invisors deployed Workday Adaptive Planning to help these clients transform results. 

Click the case studies below to read a couple of our Workday Adaptive Planning customer success stories, or use the button to reach out for guidance on optimizing workforce planning for your organization.