Our Team — Shiftwork Solutions LLC

Who We Are

Built on Experience. Grounded in Practice.

Shiftwork Solutions LLC is a fixed-fee management consulting firm specializing in shift schedule design, change management, and workforce engagement for 24/7 industrial operations. We have been doing this work for over 30 years — across hundreds of facilities, more than 16 industries, and operations ranging from 40 employees to more than 4,000.

The firm operates as a three-partner practice. Every engagement is led by a partner from kickoff through implementation. We do not use junior staff, subcontractors, or proprietary software. What we bring is judgment — about schedules, about people, and about what it takes to make lasting change in a complex operation.

The Partners

Jim Dillingham

Partner & Senior Consultant

Jim founded the firm on a philosophy that schedule change done well is one of the highest-leverage management decisions an operations leader can make — and that getting it right requires earning the workforce's trust before asking for their buy-in.

A former Naval officer, Jim brings the discipline of structured planning to every engagement, alongside a genuine belief that employees who participate in designing their schedule become its strongest advocates. He leads change management strategy for complex, multi-department, and union environments.

Over more than three decades, Jim has guided schedule transitions at operations ranging from greenfield startups to mature facilities making their first major schedule change in 20 years.

B.S. Mathematics, United States Naval Academy · M.S. Management, Purdue University · MBA, ESC Rouen (France)

Dan Capshaw

Partner & Senior Consultant

Dan combines the analytical discipline of a chemical engineer with the process improvement rigor of a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. He leads schedule design and cost modeling for technically complex operations — chemical plants, pharmaceutical facilities, continuous process manufacturing — where coverage requirements, safety constraints, and labor economics intersect in ways that generic scheduling approaches cannot address.

Dan's background includes work in submarine engineering, which gave him an early grounding in the human factors consequences of poor schedule design. That experience shapes how he approaches every cost analysis and crew structure decision.

B.S. Chemical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University · MBA, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business · Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Ethan Franklin

Partner & Senior Consultant

Ethan brings a distinctive combination of engineering analysis, legal training, and workforce survey expertise to the practice. He designed and refined the firm's proprietary Work-Life Balance Survey — the diagnostic tool that underpins every workforce engagement — and oversees the normative benchmarking database that allows clients to compare their results against similar operations across industries.

His legal background gives him a practitioner's understanding of the labor and employment dimensions of schedule change — particularly in unionized environments, where the sequencing of decisions and documentation can determine whether a well-designed change succeeds or gets reversed.

B.S. & M.S. General Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign · MBA · J.D., Loyola University Chicago School of Law

How We Work

Every engagement begins the same way: we try to understand the operation before we propose anything. That means reviewing existing schedules, talking to supervisors, and understanding the cost drivers before a single recommendation is made.

We do not arrive with a preferred schedule or a standard template. The right answer for a chemical plant running three-crew continental rotations is different from the right answer for a distribution center expanding from 5-day to 7-day operations.

The schedule is not the end product. The end product is a workforce that chose it, understood it, and is committed to making it work.

Our engagements are fixed-fee. We scope work before we price it, and the fee we agree to at the start is the fee you pay — regardless of what we find or how complex the situation turns out to be. We do not create dependency or extend engagements beyond what the problem requires.

We are available to clients for the lifetime of a relationship — not just for the duration of a project. Many clients have come back to us as their operations have grown, as labor markets have shifted, or as the schedule they implemented years ago has needed a refresh. We consider that the most meaningful measure of whether the work was done right.

Questions About Working With Us

Will I be working directly with a partner, or will junior staff handle my engagement?

You will work directly with a partner from kickoff through implementation. We do not delegate to junior staff or subcontractors. The partner you meet in the initial conversation is the person leading your engagement.

Which partner will lead my engagement?

We assign partner leads based on the nature and complexity of the engagement. Change-management-intensive projects and union environments tend to be led by Jim. Technically complex continuous-process and chemical operations typically involve Dan's lead. Engagements where workforce survey design and benchmarking are central often involve Ethan. In practice, all three partners are involved in every engagement at the analysis and review stages.

How many engagements do you run simultaneously?

We maintain a limited number of active engagements at any time to ensure each client receives full partner attention. We will be transparent about our current availability during the initial consultation — and we will tell you if our schedule doesn't align with your timeline.

Do you travel to client sites?

Yes. On-site work is central to how we operate — particularly during the employee engagement phase, where we conduct on-shift meetings with each crew. Remote work handles analysis and documentation. The work that builds trust has to happen in person, on the floor, on the shifts that are hardest to reach.

Three Partners. Deep Expertise from Day One.

Built on Experience. Grounded in Practice.

The Partners

How We Work

Questions About Working With Us