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Most people that come to our site are thinking “I need a shift schedule so all I need to do is search the internet until I find a pattern that I like.”

There are several “Danger Will Robinson” issues associated with this idea. First of all, what you like may not be what everyone else likes. Secondly, what everyone else likes may not be what is best for your company.

Suppose you like to work the Day Shift and have all of your weekends off. It won’t be hard to find a schedule that provides this type of pattern. Now, suppose you work at a refinery that runs 24/7. If you have all day shifts, then others are having to work more non-day shifts. If you have all of your weekends off, then others will have to work the weekends more often. So you can see, satisfying your personal preference may not satisfy the preference of others.

Take this same refinery. Suppose everyone agrees that weekends off would be a good thing. You will have no problem finding a schedule that gives all of the weekends off and you will certainly have no problem getting a consensus that such a schedule is a good idea from a lifestyle point of view. However, a refinery must run on the weekends. Having a schedule that gives everyone the weekends off will not change that fact.

Here are a few ways that schedules differ:
amount of coverage
amount of overtime
scheduling maintenance
scheduling vacations
absentee coverage
product flow
health and alertness
shift length
number of days in a row
fixed or rotating shifts
fixed or rotating days
cross training
sanitizing schedule
shipping schedule
warehouse capacity and scheduling
seasonality
discretionary work
overtime pay and policies

This list can go on and on. Different companies, even within the same industry often need different schedules.

Take the time to do the research and find out what you should be thinking about for your situation. We are here to help. Call our office to discuss your situation with one of our shift work experts. There is no charge for the call so if you have a question, there is no reason not to ask for help.

Lean manufacturing is one of those rare production crazes that actually works. People that have never heard of it might immediately think it implies reducing the size of the workforce. This is simply not the case.

Lean manufacturing  means to produce with the goal of zero waste.  So the question is, “What is waste?”  Waste can be inventories sitting in the warehouse not doing anything. Waste can be a downstream work center waiting while upstream work centers are falling behind. Waste can be time spent looking for tools because the workspace is a mess.

If it is not adding value, it is waste.

The shift work structure used in a Lean Manufacturing environment is extremely important. It would be a wild coincidence if every work center needed exactly the same amount of coverage every day.

In actual practice, companies try to do just that. They put everyone on the same schedule and then hope that the workload balances out. When it doesn’t, waste is created either by high overtime, high inventories or idle work centers.

Lean manufacturing works. Make sure your shift schedule works as well.

There is not a perfect answer for this question. Most 8-hour operations have the day shift start between 6:00 am and 7:00 am. The afternoon shift would start 8 hours later; the night shift, 8 hours earlier. for 12-hour shifts, the start times tend to start about 30 minutes earlier. So, if you are on an 8-hour schedule that has a day shift that starts at 6:30 am, expect the workforce to want a 6:00 am start time for 12-hour shifts.

Our research has shown that employees starting at 7:00 am get about 20 minutes more sleep per night than those starting at 6:00 am. Before you run out and change your schedule, consider the following: (1) shiftworkers are typically locked into whatever start time you currently have. They will resist change. (2) The later the day shift starts, the later the night shift gets off. This is the trade-off. Ideally, a night shift would end early enough to allow the night shift to get home before the sun comes out. This means getting off earlier rather than later.

I recently received a telephone call from a company that was having problems with their shift schedule.  The problem, it seemed, was that people were complaining about the schedule.  The company could hear the complaints but was having a hard time interpreting what they were hearing.  Was it just a few “squeaky wheels” doing all of the complaining or was their a general rumbling throughout?  Was there a specific problem or were there several issues?

The obvious concern the company had was that they needed to qualify and quantify the problem before they could take action to fix it.

This is where we came in.  Our two-survey process accomplishes the following:

The entire workforce is involved.

One person, one survey eliminates the “squeaky wheel” issue.

The first survey finds the problem, the second survey narrows down the possible solutions

The surveys made sure everyone knows what is going on.

The results from the surveys are shared with the workforce making the process “transparent” and the results data-driven.

If you are planning a change to your shift schedule, regardless of how small and apparently inconsequential, get the workforce involved.  It is their schedule.  They have structured their lifestyles around it.  Any change will have an impact on them and their families.  Getting them involved helps them to understand what is happening, why it is happening and when it is happening.  It also lets them have some input into the final solution.

Overtime is a topic that I could write a book about and still only hit the highlights. My intention is to, from time to time, post something about overtime. In this way, we can cover it in small, manageable chunks.

Let’s make it simple to start with.

The Good: Overtime represents a set of trained labor hours that can be used in increments needed to exactly match the job at hand. Cost-wise, overtime probably costs about 10% more than a fully loaded straight time hour. However, since it tends to be more productive, the cost per hour can actually be significantly lower.

The Bad: If there is too much overtime, the workforce will complain about not having any time off. If you try to reduce overtime, they will complain about lack of income opportunities.

The Ugly: High overtime can increase fatigue, turnover, absenteeism and safety incidences.