What are the different cockpit types?

Image: A Labor cockpit in PMI

At the heart of PMI are the various “cockpits”, each one designed to help you manage a different part of your operations. From keeping track of labor costs to monitoring your hotel’s environmental footprint, these cockpits give you the information you need to make informed decisions. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at each of these cockpits, breaking down what they do and how they can help you run your hotel more efficiently.

The most important aspect of a cockpit in PMI

The purpose of a cockpit is to manage resources and costs effectively. Each cockpit provides a comprehensive overview of a specific operational aspect, allowing for detailed analysis and informed decision-making.

Labor cockpit with schedule

The Labor cockpit is a tool for managing labor costs. It displays the rate of labor cost, which can be edited depending on other settings. The rate calculation can be done either inside or outside of PMI. The Labor cockpit is closely tied to the PMI Schedule, which is used for planning workforce in a department. The schedule allows for the management of labor hours, shift codes, and teams. It also provides features for adding new workers, creating rotating schedules, and even syncing with a time keeping system (TKS). The cockpit allows for comparison of schedules to the SMART Forecast, which is a recommendation of daily hours allocation to meet the set monthly productivity/hours forecast. In terms of managing hours, the Labor cockpit handles:

• Planned, targeted, and scheduled hours: The cockpit displays planned hours, which is the sum of all workers’ hours plus unspecified hours. The Smart Forecast is the target for this cockpit, meaning the actual activity (cost driver) divided by the forecasted productivity.
• Import from time keeping system: Hours from your TKS can be imported 2-4 times per day, depending on settings. PMI receives a file from your property with codes for department, position, and shifts.
• Working with PMI schedule: You can verify and update productive and non-productive hours from yesterday (or since last save) and save. If the initially scheduled hours did not match the actual hours, all changes must be done in the cockpit. Changes to past days in the schedule are not transferred to the cockpit.

Food cost cockpit

This cockpit assists the executive chef in managing food costs and planning daily purchases so they align with the food revenue stream. It is typically part of a labor cockpit, such as the kitchen, breakfast, or restaurant cockpit. The Food cost cockpit is used by the food cost cockpit owner, head chef, and sous chef. It provides a platform for summarizing all delivery notes and entering the total cost of goods purchased.

Kitchen labor cockpit

The Kitchen labor cockpit is essentially a Labor cockpit that is combined with the Food cost cockpit. This integration allows for a comprehensive overview of both labor and food costs within the kitchen department. The Food cost cockpit assists the executive chef in managing food costs and planning daily purchases in alignment with the food revenue stream. It is typically part of a labor cockpit, such as the kitchen, breakfast, or restaurant cockpit. The Labor cockpit, on the other hand, is used to manage labor cost and adjust the staffing according to expected level of activity in the department, both short and long term.

GoGreen cockpit

The GoGreen cockpit is designed to monitor and manage environmental resource consumption at a property. It covers several aspects:

• Energy consumption: The GoGreen cockpit allows users to track and manage energy usage. This includes electricity, gas, and potentially other forms of energy .
• Waste management: The cockpit provides insights into waste generation and management. This could potentially include food waste, general waste, and recycling .
• Resource consumption: The cockpit provides a platform to record and monitor the consumption of various resources. This could include water usage and other resources relevant to the property’s operations.
• Environmental KPIs: The GoGreen cockpit provides an overview of key environmental performance indicators. This includes the GoGreen cost per occupied room (CPOR), which measures the total environmental cost per occupied room.

Parent cockpit

A Parent cockpit in PMI is designed to consolidate hours and activity cost drivers from two or more sub-cockpits. This consolidation streamlines the review and update process of the individual sub-cockpits. For instance, departments like IT, maintenance, and finance, which are operated by a fixed staff level irrespective of day-to-day fluctuations in business activity, may benefit from a Parent cockpit. This allows you to see hours and activity cost driver for individual departments while also viewing a consolidated overview.

However, it’s important to note that the PMI Index looks at the individual cockpits only and not at the Parent cockpit as a whole. Each cockpit has an individual productivity rate and the score is calculated individually.

To set up a Parent cockpit, the sub-cockpits must have the same activity cost driver. It’s not possible to consolidate different drivers. The Parent cockpit is activated in configuration, a process typically done by a d2o consultant. It operates in the same way as a normal cockpit but has some additional features, such as the ability to view one or all sub-cockpits (consolidated view), and the ability to update rates specifically to individual sub-cockpits.