Patent ID: 7386850

Claim:
A work-management method comprising: for a future point in time, determining a probability of availability of each resource of a plurality of resources at said future point in time, to obtain the probabilities of availability of the plurality of the resources, comprising determining an amount of time that a resource has already spent servicing a task, determining a first probability of completion of the servicing of the task by the resource by the future point in time without consideration of the amount of time that the resource has already spent servicing the task, determining a second probability that the resource has not completed servicing the task within the amount of time that the resource has already spent servicing the task, and determining from the first and the second probability a third probability of completion of the servicing of the task by the resource by the future point in time considering the amount of time that the resource has already spent servicing the task; combining together the third determined probability of availability of each resource of the plurality of resources to obtain a number that is a result of the combining; and using the number to schedule new tasks for the resources for the future point in time.