Labor Standards: engineered labor standards and goals

Set one standard UPH per task type in Labor → Standards. That standard is the goal everyone is measured against: achievement = actual UPH ÷ standard.

A labor standard answers a simple question in plain numbers: how much of this kind of work should one person finish in one hour? In Docklify that number is the standard UPH (units per hour) for a task type — receiving, picking, packing and so on. Set it once in Labor → Standards, and the same number becomes the goal used everywhere else: the Labor dashboard and the reports compare each person’s actual UPH against it and show the result as an achievement percentage.

Reading the standards list#

• Each row is one task type: its name, its code (for example wms.pick_task), the standard UPH, and the unit it is counted in (pieces, pallets, lines, orders, locations or events).
• “In UPH ranking” tells you whether this task type takes part in the UPH ranking. Heavy hands-on work such as receiving, putaway, picking, packing and counting is ranked; lighter work such as creating orders, approving orders or printing labels has a standard for reference but stays out of the ranking.
• “Effective from” is the day the current standard started applying. The list always shows the standard in effect today for each task type.

That one shared standard is what keeps the numbers honest across pages: the achievement percentage on Labor → Dashboard, the leaderboard and the “needs coaching” list are all worked out against the standards on this page, so a goal never means one thing on one screen and something else on another.

Step 1: Set or update a standard#

1. Open Labor → Standards and click Set standard at the top right.
2. Pick the task type. The dropdown lists every task type in the system — types without a standard yet come first, and types that already have one are listed too, so you can pick an existing type to update it. You can type to search the list.
3. Enter the standard UPH: how many units of this task one person should finish per hour. The number must be above zero; decimals are allowed.
4. Confirm to save. The list refreshes and the row for that task type now shows your new standard, effective from today.

Updating works the same way as setting: saving does not overwrite the old number — it adds a new standard that takes effect today, and the earlier standards stay on record. So if you raise the picking standard next month, anyone can still see what the standard was before and when it changed, and there is no separate delete or undo step to worry about.

Which task types have standards#

• Warehouse work: receiving (per piece), pallet putaway (per pallet), loose putaway (per piece), picking (per line), packing (per order), cycle counting (per location), replenishment and re-slotting (per pallet or location), plus load building (per order).
• Office-side work in OMS: order creation, order approval and label printing — each counted in its own unit, with a standard for reference but outside the UPH ranking.
• Yard, transport and returns work: yard check-in and check-out, yard moves, load planning and dispatch in TMS, drayage orders, container pickup and return, and RMA inspection and receiving in RMS and Purchase (including ASN receiving).

The task types in the dropdown come from the work the other Docklify apps record as people do it — a standard only makes sense for work that is actually being recorded. If a type your team does is missing, check first that the work itself is being done in the system; the type appears in this list from the shared task-type list, not from a free-text field on this page.

How achievement is worked out#

Achievement % = actual UPH ÷ standard UPH × 100. At 100% the person is working exactly at the standard; above it they are ahead of the goal, below it they are behind. On the Labor dashboard the percentage is shown with a colour band so a supervisor can read a whole team at a glance:

• Green — 100% or more: at or above standard.
• Yellow — 85% to 99%: close, a small gap to close.
• Orange — 70% to 84%: clearly below standard; worth a closer look at the work, the training or the standard itself.
• Red — below 70%: far below standard; this is the group that shows up in the dashboard’s “needs coaching” list.

Checking the result after you set a standard#

Once a standard is in place, Labor → Dashboard shows today’s average UPH and the team’s achievement percentage against it, with the leaderboard and needs-coaching lists worked out from the same numbers. For a period view — output, hours and UPH grouped by person, by task type or by day — use Labor → Reports, where you can also export the figures to CSV.

Standard time, calibration suggestions and the warehouse caliber switch#

Below the UPH list, the same page also keeps standard time per task type: how many minutes one unit of work should take, times a difficulty factor for heavier work. Standard time = units × standard minutes × difficulty factor, and performance % = standard time ÷ actual time. A task type can have one organization-wide standard and, where a warehouse works differently, a warehouse standard on top — the warehouse standard wins where both exist. Saving always adds a new version that takes effect from its effective date; earlier periods keep being worked out with the version that applied then.

1. To set a standard time, click Set standard time in the “Engineered standard time” card, pick the task type, optionally pick a warehouse (leave it empty for the organization default), enter the standard minutes per unit, the difficulty factor and the unit (task, line, piece or pallet), and save.
2. To get a suggestion from real work, use the calibration card: Load suggestions works out, from approved time entries in the lookback window, the middle value (P50) of minutes per finished task for each task type and warehouse. If there are not enough finished tasks yet, the row says “Not enough samples” and no number is offered — work to the manual number above instead. Nothing takes effect on its own: Accept suggestion saves the number as a new standard, and you can also adjust it in the Set standard time form first.
3. To switch a warehouse to the standard caliber, use the caliber card at the bottom of the page: pick the warehouse and Switch caliber. From then on, that warehouse’s Dashboard and Operators pages (select the warehouse there) show achievement as performance % against standards; task types without a standard are listed separately as “No standard” and are never counted into the percentage. Warehouses you do not switch keep the UPH caliber, and you can switch back the same way — every switch is recorded.

Job rates and labor cost by client#

The Job rates card at the bottom of the same page prices approved hours into labor cost. A rate is an hourly amount for one job type — a task type such as picking or packing, or an indirect code such as training. The rate that applies is the one in effect on the day the work happened: a warehouse rate wins over the organization default, and setting a higher rate today never reprices work from earlier periods, so historical cost reports stay stable. Rates are per job type only — nobody’s personal pay is stored here.

1. To set a rate, click Set rate in the Job rates card, pick the job (or type a project role key starting with role:), optionally pick a warehouse (leave it empty for the organization default), enter the hourly rate and currency, choose the effective-from date (and an optional effective-to date), and save. The card lists the rate currently in effect for each job and scope.
2. Cost by client is worked out automatically every day: approved hours are traced back to the client they belong to (through the project or the shipment behind the task) and priced at the rate of their work day. Hours that cannot be traced to a client — indirect time, transfers and the like — are reported as warehouse overhead in the Labor Cost by Client report dataset, with their share shown openly; they are never spread over clients by proportion. Hours for a job with no rate yet stay unpriced and are counted separately as rate-missing seconds, never silently priced at 0.

Docklify features used in this article#

• Standards list (task type / code / standard UPH / unit / UPH ranking / effective from) — Labor → Standards (/labor/standards)
• Set standard (pick a task type, enter standard UPH, effective today) — Labor → Standards → Set standard (/labor/standards)
• Achievement percentage and colour bands — Labor → Dashboard (/labor/dashboard)
• Engineered standard time, calibration suggestions and the per-warehouse caliber switch — Labor → Standards (/labor/standards)
• Job rates card (current rate per job and scope) and Set rate form — Labor → Standards (/labor/standards)
• Period productivity reports with CSV export — Labor → Reports (/labor/reports)