Process industry — continuous production

Shift planning in the process industry

In continuous three-shift work a shift cannot be left unstaffed and a line cannot be run without a qualified operator. Stafferi keeps the rotation, the qualifications and the staffing requirement in one view — including the weeks when a turnaround turns the whole cycle upside down.

Pulp and paper, chemicals, power generation, food and beverage, and metals processing.

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Why a spreadsheet is not enough in continuous three-shift work

In nine-to-five production a spreadsheet holds up for a long time. In a continuous process it never really holds up at all, and the reason is structural — not that a spreadsheet is a bad tool.

The averaging period does not fit in a month view

In continuous 24/7 operation the average contractual week in many industrial agreements sits well below 40 hours, often in the low to mid thirties once the rotation's built-in free weeks are counted. Working time therefore does not balance within a month; it balances over a long averaging period. A workbook built around a monthly tab cannot prove that the period balances, because it cannot see the period.

A rotation is not a calendar

The plant runs roughly 8,760 hours a year. The rotation advances on its own cycle, which settles neither on a calendar week nor on a month boundary: the same shift lands on a different weekday at different points in the cycle. Build that by hand in columns and every exception has to be corrected manually all the way forward to the end of the period.

A formula does not know who is qualified

A spreadsheet can add up hours, but it does not know that the night shift must include at least one person holding a valid site-specific authorisation. It will happily accept a roster that must not be run — and the error is found at handover.

Shift systems and rotations Stafferi understands

A rotation is defined once, and from then on the roster follows the cycle. Different plants and different lines in the same company can run different systems.

Discontinuous three-shift work

Three shifts on weekdays, production stops for the weekend. Mornings, afternoons and nights rotate week by week.

Continuous three-shift work

The plant runs around the clock, seven days a week, public holidays included. Every hour of the year has to be staffed.

Five-crew rotation

Five crews cover continuous running so that free weeks and training days fit inside the cycle without permanent overtime.

Six-crew rotation

Used in paper mills among others. Longer blocks of time off, a more complex cycle and closer tracking of the balance.

The shift pattern is built once and can be adjusted per plant. Once the rotation is in the system, rest-period and averaging checks run automatically on every change.

Turnaround and annual shutdown staffing

The annual turnaround is the hardest planning situation in the process industry, and it is exactly where a normal roster stops working. For two weeks the rhythm of the whole plant is inverted: production is taken down, maintenance runs flat out, and hundreds of contractor personnel arrive on site at the same time, every one of whom must hold a valid induction and the right authorisations.

A planning period of its own

The shutdown is planned as its own period on top of the normal rotation. Shutdown, maintenance work and start-up are separate phases with separate staffing requirements.

Contractors in the same view

External labour, their qualifications and their inductions appear on the same roster as in-house staff. Nobody at the gate has to guess whose certificate is still valid.

Back to the normal rotation

After the shutdown the rotation picks up where it left off. The roster does not have to be rebuilt by hand, and the running balance is never interrupted.

The actuals are kept

What the shutdown actually took in people and hours stays in the system, so next year's turnaround is planned on measured data rather than on recollection.

Qualifications and the skills matrix

On a process plant staffing is not a headcount. A shift is covered only when the right number of people are present and they hold the right qualifications in force. Stafferi tracks qualifications per person — safety passports and site inductions, hot-work permits, confined-space and lockout/tagout authorisations, food-hygiene certificates, electrical-safety authorisations and plant-specific sign-offs — and raises an alert before a certificate expires.

Because the skills matrix and the roster live in the same system, a planner cannot accidentally assign someone whose qualification has lapsed. Read more about how workforce planning and shift planning differ from each other.

Process industry sectors

Pulp and paper

Continuous running, long rotations and annual turnarounds in which staffing multiplies for a fortnight.

Chemicals

Strict qualification requirements and safety rules — a shift cannot be run without the plant-specific induction.

Power generation

Round-the-clock control-room cover, electrical-safety authorisations and seasonal swings in load.

Food and beverage

Hygiene certificates, changeovers between production batches and pronounced seasonal peaks in the staffing requirement.

Metals processing

Smelters and rolling mills run continuously. You cannot shut a furnace down because a shift is one operator short.

Pharmaceuticals

Documented competence and traceability — who did what, with which training, provable after the fact.

Frequently asked questions

In discontinuous three-shift work production runs three shifts on weekdays and stops for the weekend. In continuous three-shift work the plant runs around the clock, seven days a week, so roughly 8,760 hours a year have to be staffed and the rotation never lines up with the calendar week. In Stafferi each pattern is defined as its own rotation, so different plants in the same company can run different shift systems.

In continuous 24/7 operation the average contractual week in many industrial agreements sits well below 40 hours — often in the low to mid thirties once the rotation's built-in free weeks are counted — so hours do not balance within a month but over a long averaging period. Under the EU Working Time Directive the 48-hour weekly maximum is itself an average over a reference period of up to four months, which national law or a collective agreement can extend to six or twelve months in defined cases. Stafferi runs the balance continuously across whichever period is configured and shows the deviation while the plan is still a draft. Always check your own national working-time act and collective agreement, because the limits differ by country and by sector.

There is no single European figure. Most national working-time acts and industrial collective agreements require the roster to be given to employees in writing in good time before the period it covers begins — a week is a common statutory minimum and many agreements require more, particularly where the rotation is continuous. In Stafferi the roster is published with one button and appears on employees' phones immediately, and every change made after publication is logged with a timestamp. The notice period itself is configured per site so the system enforces the rule that actually applies to you.

During a turnaround the normal rotation is inverted for a week or two and hundreds of contractor personnel arrive on site at once. In Stafferi the shutdown gets its own planning period, in which in-house shifts, shutdown and start-up phases and the qualifications and inductions of external resources sit in the same view. When it is over, the normal rotation resumes without rebuilding the roster by hand.

When a sick call comes in at five in the morning for the day shift, Stafferi immediately shows who is off, who holds a valid qualification for that workstation and for whom taking the shift would not break a rest period. Cover can be requested straight from the system, and the swap updates the roster, the absence records and the payroll data in one go.

Yes. Evening, night, weekend and public-holiday premiums, along with working-time bank and time-off-in-lieu accrual, are calculated from the shifts actually worked and transfer to payroll as a file export or through an interface. The premium rules are configured to match your own collective agreement, because they differ by country and by sector.

Try it on your own rotation

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