Role
Shift supervisor
Who notices first that the shift will not make the plan - the supervisor, or planning a day later? The answer says whether information from the floor moves faster than the problem.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
Who notices first that the shift will not make the plan?
If it is the supervisor, good - but the question is how long passes before anyone outside the floor knows.
What do you put off first when a shift starts falling apart?
Usually the report, because it seems least urgent. And it is usually its absence that makes the next shift start from the same place.
Where does information about a stoppage go - into the system or into the supervisor's head?
If it is the head, then three months later nobody will reconstruct which machine stood idle longest and why.
Whose desk does it land on when a position is short of a person?
And how many phone calls it takes before somebody with the right qualifications is standing at the machine.
We take over the recording and the searching, you keep running the shift
Collecting the state at the start, matching staffing to qualifications, recording events and preparing the report can be taken off the desk. Decisions about who stands where and what we do during a stoppage stay with the supervisor.
- The shift starts with the picture already assembled. - What is left from the previous shift, what is down, what is missing - before the supervisor walks onto the floor, not during the first hour.
- Staffing is proposed by qualification. - Who may stand at that machine is visible straight away. Who to put there is the supervisor's decision.
- The report is built from how the shift ran. - Not from the supervisor's memory at ten at night, but from what was recorded over the eight hours.
Scope
What can be taken off a shift supervisor
Twenty-two example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to how your shifts are organised.
The start of the shift
- The state of the orders taken over from the previous shift
- The list of unavailable machines and the reason
- Material prepared for this shift's orders
- Absences reported for today
- Tasks carried over from the previous shift with a note
Staffing and competences
- Who holds valid qualifications for a given position
- A proposed cover for an absence (decision: the supervisor)
- A signal when a qualification expires this month
- A record of the actual staffing of positions on the shift
Reacting to events
- Reporting a stoppage with an automatic timestamp
- A list of stoppage causes to choose from instead of a written description
- Notifying maintenance about a breakdown
- A signal when an operation exceeds its standard time
- A register of the decisions taken during a stoppage (entry: the supervisor)
The shift report
- Output against plan by order
- Stoppages summarised with time and cause
- Defects and scrap recorded as they happen
- A draft report for approval (approval: the supervisor)
Handing over the shift
- The list of open matters for the next shift
- The state of the machines and the orders in progress
- The supervisor's remarks in one place, not in four channels
- Confirmation of the handover by the next shift's supervisor
A day's work
Today
- You spend the first hour of the shift establishing what is left from the previous one
- At an absence you phone round people and check qualifications in a binder
- You write a stoppage on a slip of paper, because there is nowhere to do it at the machine
- You write the report after the shift, from memory and from notes
- The next shift hears about a problem from an operator, not from you
- Nobody knows which stoppage cause comes back most often
With AI assistance
- You have the picture from the previous shift before you walk onto the floor
- At an absence you see straight away who holds valid qualifications for that position
- You report a stoppage with one choice from a list, and the time stamps itself
- The report is ready to check rather than to write
- The handover goes by one route and is confirmed
- Stoppage causes are summarised by frequency
- Time to react to a stoppage
maintenance knows about a breakdown straight away, with no middleman
the report comes from where the event happened
- Quality of the handover
the next shift starts from the state, not from a reconstruction
the handover has one form and a confirmation
- Staffing against need
fewer positions staffed without valid qualifications
qualifications are visible when staffing
- Visible stoppage causes
it is known what stops production most often
the cause is chosen from a list rather than described
We start with the start of the shift, because that is where the most time comes back fastest.
- Step 1
The picture at the start of the shift
The state of the orders, the machines and the staffing in one place, available before you walk onto the floor.
- Step 2
Recording events at the machine
A stoppage reported with one choice, with no written description. This is the moment that decides whether the data will exist.
- Step 3
The report and the handover
The report assembled from what was recorded, the handover by one route with a confirmation.
- Step 4
Cause summaries
Only at the end, because it needs a few weeks of recorded events.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Will supervisors be assessed on the basis of this data?
That is your decision, but our recommendation is unambiguous: the summaries serve to recognise problems in the process, not to compare shifts with each other. If the data is used to hold people to account, it will stop being true within a month and you will lose both.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Running a shift is not a high-risk use. The line runs at staffing data: we record who stood at a position, because that is necessary for quality and qualifications, but we do not build a productivity assessment of individuals out of it - that would already be an employee evaluation system.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
How long does the first hour of a shift take in your plant?
We will show you what the start of a shift looks like when the supervisor is handed a ready picture of the floor, and a report that is not written from memory.