Schedule adherence measures how closely technicians' actual days follow the planned schedule: the right jobs, in the planned order, starting within their planned times. It is the gap between the board in the morning and what really happened.
It is related to on-time arrival rate, which only measures whether the customer's window was met. Schedule adherence also counts jobs moved, swapped or dropped.
How to measure schedule adherence
The simplest version counts jobs that ran as planned:
Schedule adherence = Jobs started within tolerance of planned start ÷ Jobs scheduled
Pick a tolerance, such as 30 minutes either side. Say 180 jobs were on the board last week and 144 started within 30 minutes of their planned time. Adherence is 144 ÷ 180, or 80%.
Track the misses by cause. Typical categories:
- Previous job ran long.
- Drive took longer than planned.
- Job reassigned to another technician.
- Customer not available or rescheduled.
- Emergency inserted ahead of it.
The split tells you whether the problem is job length, travel, dispatch decisions or the customer.
Why it matters
Poor adherence is usually decided at booking, not on the day. If the board was built without realistic drive times between jobs, the plan was never reachable. The first job runs on time, the second is 15 minutes late, the fourth is an hour late, and the dispatcher spends the afternoon calling customers.
Two things make a schedule easier to keep: realistic job duration estimates and drive time computed from the previous job, not the shop. CrewLink checks that travel feasibility before a slot is offered, so the board starts the day reachable. The scheduling KPIs post covers how adherence fits with other measures.
A common mistake
Treating every change as a miss. Some changes are good dispatching, like moving a job to a closer technician or filling a cancellation. Separate deliberate improvements from slippage, or the number will punish dispatchers for doing their job well.
Related terms
- On-time arrival rate measures the customer-facing result.
- Scheduling board is where the plan lives.
- Travel-feasible scheduling makes the plan reachable to begin with.
Common questions
What is the difference between schedule adherence and on-time arrival?
On-time arrival asks whether the customer's window was met. Schedule adherence asks whether the plan was followed. A job can arrive on time while the schedule was reshuffled to make it happen.
What tolerance should I use?
Use one that fits your arrival windows. If you promise two-hour windows, a 30-minute tolerance on planned start is reasonable. Keep the same tolerance so the trend is comparable.
How do I improve schedule adherence?
Fix the inputs: realistic job lengths, real drive times between jobs and some room for emergencies. Then track misses by cause and work on the biggest one.