Industry: Commercial Printing
Challenge: CIRCADIAN was asked by a major commercial printing company to facilitate the process of identifying and implementing the optimal work schedule for 8 of their plants in the Eastern and Central region of the United States.
All 8 plants worked the same 12-hour schedule, which had been inherited from the oldest plant. The passing of the same shift schedule from plant-to-plant was done as a matter of convenience and comfort – a common practice with companies that have multiple plant locations. However, as each new plant inherited the schedule, it no longer reflected the local workforce’s preferences and regional customs.
Solution: After management established the business parameters for each plant, CIRCADIAN went from plant to plant to survey the employees and develop schedule options that would fulfill the business requirements and at the same time incorporate the employee-desired schedule features.
The survey results revealed that all of the plants wanted to stay with a 12-hour schedule. This decision was not surprising because it is extremely rare for employees working 12-hour shifts to want to change to 8-hour shifts. Why? Simply put, most enjoy the additional days and weekends off too much in a 12-hour schedule to want to convert to an 8-hour schedule.
While all 8 plants wanted to work a 12-hour schedule, each had very different idea about the speed of rotation, the on/off pattern of days and nights, and the frequency and distribution of the weekends off. In other words, they all wanted a schedule that was specific to their plant.
For example, for the plants in the Northeast, a fair distribution of the summer weekends between the 4 crews was very important, whereas the employees at the Midwestern plants focused on the time off around the holidays and the start of deer hunting season. For the employees at the Southern plants, other factors such as the length of breaks in between shift turns were the most important considerations for their new schedules.
Result: The optimal schedule is site specific
This assignment vividly demonstrates one of the key lessons about schedule selection: one size does not fit all, and the “best” schedule is truly a site specific phenomenon.
Most of the plants operated by this client looked alike, performed the same tasks and activities, and even dressed in the same uniforms. Nevertheless, the employees at each facility had different ideas about what their schedule should look like, and thus many were at odds with the original schedule that had been handed down from “Corporate”.
In large corporations, it can be very tempting to transplant a schedule that works fine at one location to another location. But local and regional cultures and the demographic mix of personnel is different at each individual plant. Thus, even with the best of intentions, it is very difficult for corporate management to predict, let alone address, these different wishes and circumstances at each location.
As a result, an inflexible “one size fits all” approach to scheduling can unintentionally cause labor relations issues, recruiting and retention problems, increasing levels of absenteeism, and even performance decrements due to low morale and negative attitudes. By creating site specific schedules at each plant, our client was able to avoid these bottom-line killers and improve productivity and profits across the company.
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