Shifts are unlikely to be constant over time at your factory, so it's important to update workers' shifts on Autodesk Fusion Operations every time they change. However, you must not just change the workers' shift to the new one. On the contrary, it is critical that you keep record of all the previous shifts so that past production records are correctly calculated in terms of time spent and productivity. The next steps will provide you a detailed explanation about how to set shifts work and how they can be correctly set.
Additionally, on the bottom of the page you can see how to model some specific cases.
How to add a shift change
1. Go to the Workers tab and then click on the Edit button related to the worker you want to add a shift change.
2. You will see now the screen below, where you can manage not only shifts, but also some more information about the worker.
In box (1), you can edit the worker's shift, which is detailed below, worker's skills, and worker's worker groups.
3. Open the Work Shifts (1) tab, and click on +Add Shift Change (2).
4. You can now enter details about the shift change in box (1).
In box (1), you can enter:
start date: here you must enter the day in which the new shift comes into force;
shift: refers to the shift that must be applied during the time interval you want. If that shift hasn't been created yet, contact our support team;
end date: indicates the last day the shift is applicable. This is not mandatory, since you may not know until when the shift will occur. However, pay close attention since leaving this space empty will lead a shift to be always considered in the future;
recurrency: this field is suitable for defining cases in which the shift occurs within a certain pattern. If you select Only once, the pattern is isolated and never repeated. If you select Days, it means the pattern repeats itself within a certain interval of days. If you select Weeks, you can model situations in which the shift repeats itself within a certain interval of weeks.
frequency: fill this option if the shift's recurrency is either Days or Weeks. It defines how long the shift takes until it repeats itself (for daily recurrency, the time unit is days, for weekly recurrency the time unit is weeks).
duration (days): this option defines how many days the shift must be considered every time it repeats itself. If the shift's recurrency is only once, this field defines how many days it should be considered. For both daily or weekly recurrency, this field indicates how many days the shift is applied when it repeats itself.
The calendar box (2) allows you to confirm what shift is indeed being considered on a specific day. You can navigate throughout the days by using the arrows nested under Calendar view.
Most likely scenarios
See below some common examples that may help you:
1. All workers will from next week on, leave an hour earlier every Friday.
This situation can be modelled by creating a specific shift that must be applied all Fridays. This new shift (NewFriday) could be added as shown below. The start date must be a Friday, so it repeats itself every Friday. There is no end date since there is no predicted time for this shift to no longer be applied. Recurrency must be weekly, since the shift repeats itself weekly, frequency of 1 because it happens every week, and duration of 1 day, because it is only applied on Friday, and not on the days after.
2. A worker is going to work exceptionally on the night shift over the three following weeks, and will return to the normal shift afterwards.
For this case, the simplest solution is selecting the Night shift over the three following weeks, defining a recurrency of weeks (since the pattern repeats itself weekly), frequency of 1 (because it must be applied for all weeks), and duration of 5 days (because it must come into force from Monday to Friday)
3. A specific worker was assigned to work alternately on Saturdays. He is supposed to do this until further notice.
Here, the solution is creating a shift specific for Saturdays (SaturdayShift). The start date is a Saturday (since the shift is to be applied on Saturdays), there is no end date, the recurrency is weekly (since the shift has a weekly-based pattern), frequency is 2 (since repeats itself every two weeks) and a duration of one day (it only comes into force on Saturday).
4. A worker is assigned to two different shifts, which change every three weeks.
This scenario can be modelled by inserting two new Shifts, both with a weekly recurrency, frequency of 6 (since they repeat every six weeks) and duration of 21 days (3 weeks * 7 days per week). Please take a look at the start dates on the image below: the second shift starts three weeks later.
We hope this article was helpful. Please do not hesitate in case you need guidance to define the shift changes or to create new shifts.
Need help? Request a Fusion Operations expert to contact you here.