Reaching the monthly productivity target is your key goal. Keeping the blue hours bars as close to the yellow line (SMART Forecast) as possible means that you are achieving your daily productivity target. Keep in mind that this is not always possible or desirable for all departments. This will depend on the type of daily activity you have in your department, as groups or individuals such as kitchen and M&E Ops are often “producing/preparing” before guests arrive and revenue is posted.

You can always see the actual/planned, forecasted, budgeted and last year’s productivity in the graph on the bottom right side of the cockpit. By choosing to see month-to-date or month-end, you will see where you are and where you are likely to end up, with the current schedule and expected activity (live forecast).

The yellow line in the upper graph is your productivity guideline. This takes the daily live Forecast and divides it by the productivity target (forecasted productivity). The closer the blue hours bars are to the yellow line, the closer you are to your target.

If blue bars are below the line, you are using less than your expected hours, i.e. you are being more productive than expected. If the bars go above the yellow line, the opposite is the case. If you are consistently under or over the line, you may have set an unrealistic target. This target should not be changed during the month, but acknowledged and taken it into consideration when planning the productivity forecasts for coming months.

When there are larger discrepancies between the actual and expected productivity, take note of the reasons why. How did the workload effect service and production level?

Dates to the left of the black line are historical, and planned/scheduled hours are on the right side.