Exceptions & Re-Planning
A plan that only works on a good day is not a plan. This page is about the other days.
An exception is anything that makes the current plan untrue: an absence, an overrun, a hold, a rework, a vehicle that arrives without an appointment. Re-planning is what BayWise does about it, and the action centre is where the things it cannot decide alone come to you.
What causes a re-plan
The plan is revised whenever the floor tells BayWise something new:
- A vehicle is checked in, or an extra service is added to one already here
- Work starts, pauses, resumes or completes
- A technician reports a delay and how much longer they need
- A technician is marked absent, or clocks in later than expected
- A bay is taken out of service, or brought back
- A promise time is changed
- Work fails a quality check and goes back for rework
- A job is cancelled, or a vehicle is handed over
- A vehicle is moved to a different bay or technician by hand
You do not trigger a re-plan and you cannot forget to. The board reflects the current plan, and the change feed tells you what moved.
What re-planning does and does not touch
Work in progress is not moved. A vehicle on a lift with a technician on it stays where it is. Re-planning is about what happens next, not about interrupting what is happening now.
Your overrides stand. If you moved a vehicle to a particular bay, it stays in that bay.
Promises are protected in preference to convenience. The point of re-planning is to keep commitments, not to produce a tidier board.
Vehicles that can no longer be placed are raised, not hidden. If the day genuinely cannot absorb the change, BayWise says so rather than producing a plan that quietly cannot happen.
The action centre
The action centre is the rail on the right of the board, and it is the answer to “what needs me?”. It sorts work into five lenses.
| Lens | Contains | Typical action |
|---|---|---|
| Needs action | Promise breached, promise soon, allocated time passed, failed quality check, long pause, not started | Open, reassign, call the customer |
| Waiting | Vehicles in parking, not yet started | Usually nothing — this is the queue |
| In progress | Work on the floor, balance pending | Watch |
| Unblock | Finished vehicles still holding a bay | Hand over |
| Could not schedule | Vehicles the day could not fit | Decide what to do |
Every row carries a plain reason — “promise passed 12 minutes ago”, “assigned 40 minutes ago — not started”, “every step done · holding a bay” — and the actions available for that row.
Collapsed, the rail still shows how many things are urgent. It never hides a problem to save space.
→ Action Centre Lenses · Use the action centre
When a vehicle could not be scheduled
Sometimes there is no honest place for a car today. Rather than invent one, BayWise puts the vehicle in the Could not schedule lens with a reason:
| Reason | Means |
|---|---|
| No bay | No bay free today that can do this service |
| No bay/tech | No eligible bay or technician today |
| No slot | No feasible slot found in today’s remaining window |
| Too long | Not enough of today’s window left to fit it |
| Stuck | Not yet seen — usually clears on the next refresh |
| Unplaced | Could not be placed, cause not one of the above |
Each row also shows how long the vehicle has been waiting and where its promise stands, so you can tell the difference between a car that arrived ten minutes ago and one that has been unplaced since half past eight.
This is a feature, not a failure. A shop that is genuinely full needs to know it at 09:00 — while there is time to call a customer, bring somebody in, or move a promise — rather than at 16:00.
→ When a car could not be scheduled
A vehicle appearing here repeatedly, for the same service, is a configuration signal rather than a busy day. It usually means no bay is described as able to do that work, or the only technician qualified for it is not available. Fix the description, not the individual car.
Overriding the plan
You can always overrule the plan. Three overrides cover almost everything:
Move to a different bay. The vehicle goes where you put it.
Swap the technician. The work goes to the person you choose.
Pause with a reason. The work stops and the reason is recorded, and everything behind it re-plans.
Overrides are permanent decisions, not temporary suggestions — BayWise does not quietly undo them on the next refresh. Use them freely; they are the point of having a person in the loop.
→ Move a car to another bay or technician
Common exceptions, and what to do
A technician calls in sick
Mark them absent. Their work comes off the plan and is re-placed against colleagues who hold the same skills. Anything that cannot be re-placed appears under Could not schedule, by name, so you know exactly what to ring about.
A job is going to take much longer
The technician reports it from the card: delayed, how much longer, and why. The countdown resets, the afternoon re-plans, and anything now at risk appears in the action centre.
Parts have not arrived
Pause the work with the reason waiting for parts. The vehicle shows as held for parts on the board and in the action centre. If nobody updates it, the board asks whether it is still waiting.
Work fails its quality check
Reopen the stage. The vehicle goes back to where the problem was introduced, carries a visible rework count, and re-enters the plan as work to be done.
A bay breaks
Set it to maintenance. Nothing new is placed there. Anything currently in it needs moving by hand — a broken lift with a car on it is a physical problem before it is a scheduling one.
A walk-in arrives on a full day
Check it in as normal. If it fits, it is placed. If it does not, it appears under Could not schedule with the reason, and you decide whether to promise tomorrow, bring somebody in, or turn it away — with the facts in front of you.
The change feed
The board’s Updated control lists what has changed since it last refreshed: a car came in, a car left a bay, work started, a stage advanced, a promise moved, something was re-planned to a new time.
This is what makes it safe to leave the board and come back. You do not need to have watched it to know what happened while you were on the floor.