Metals Fabrication

Redesigning Shift Operations Around Actual Workflow

A metals fabrication plant operating three shifts without a unified operating model.

We traced the plant's quality variance to the handoff between shifts, and quality holds linked to handoffs fell by roughly 45 percent.

~45%

Fewer quality holds traced to shift handoffs

Situation

Shift handover is a recognized failure point in continuous operations. Bodies such as the Center for Chemical Process Safety treat it as a risk category of its own, because information about equipment state, work in progress and open issues has to pass between people who barely overlap.

At this plant, documented reporting lines and standard work had drifted away from practice. Each supervisor had built a personal method for setting priorities. Quality problems clustered at the change of shift, where work in progress, tooling state and material status changed hands with no agreed standard.

What we did

We mapped the plant as it ran, on the floor, across all three shifts. The documented process had already proved unreliable as a guide. The redesign concentrated on the handoff: what information must transfer, and who decides when outgoing and incoming supervisors disagree on priorities.

Handoff element	Before	Redesigned standard
Information transferred	Informal and dependent on the supervisor	A defined checklist: equipment state, work in progress, unresolved issues
Handoff duration	Unstructured and variable	A five-minute overlap briefing at every shift change
Decision ownership	Unclear when priorities conflicted	Named ownership for the handoff window

One shift pairing ran the new protocol for three weeks before anyone else adopted it.

Impact

Quality holds attributed to shift handoffs fell by about 45 percent after the five-minute overlap briefing between outgoing and incoming supervisors became standard.
Decision authority is now matched across supervisors, which removed a source of friction nobody had previously diagnosed.
Adoption reached all three shifts with supervisor support already in place from the pilot.

What made it work

The pilot let supervisors shape the checklist under real conditions. By rollout, the protocol was something their peers had tested, not something handed down.

We also changed what was measured. Looking at the transition between shifts, instead of output within each shift, is what made the pattern visible in the first place.

Results

Handoff-related quality holds cut by approximately 45 percent

Supervisors on every shift now hold the same decision authority

Supervisor support secured before the plant-wide rollout

Engagement facts

Sector: Metals Fabrication
Practice area: Transformation & Organization
Client profile: Fabrication plant running three shifts
Services: Operating-model mapping, handoff redesign, change plan
Key phases: Floor observation; three-week pilot; plant-wide rollout

This case study is a composite drawn from multiple engagements. Client details have been changed and combined to protect confidentiality, and figures are representative rather than attributable to any single client.