Exploratory Outlook on the Shift Rotation Practices in Supply Chain Operation

Abstract

Businesses aim to grow rapidly, at such a fast pace that they remain in operation 24x7. To support the continuous action, operations are performed all through the day in different shifts backed up by a large dynamic workforce. As per Labour Review 2010, every 3 in 6 employees work other than in the regular day schedules. Working in shift arrangement might take a toll on employees social, personal and physical well-being. In order to manage this imbalance due to change in lifestyle, industries provide the provision of working in rotating shifts to its employees, by which every employee gets a turn to work in different shifts after a defined time frame. The practice is implemented more from the viewpoint of welfare of the employees than the business yield standpoint. However, this is not indicative of overlooking the productivity and efficiency of operations. Rotating shifts is a very popular application in the service sector and is slowly gaining popularity with the offshoring setups of manufacturing companies. Unlike the service sector, manufacturing industries involves deep dependence on logistics, material planning and inventory management requiring a lot of predictive and reactive forecasting. Though transactional, the business revolves highly around customer relationship building and processes which are region centric. Therefore, the conventional IT practices on rotating shifts could not be implemented in supply chain operations. Also, there are a very few studies conducted on the business impact due to rotating shifts. The motivation behind this paper is to fill in the research gap between the literature and the conventional practices across the industry using a benchmarking study and an extensive cause and effect analysis. The paper intends to analyze the critical parameters for deciding the characteristics of the rotating shift and also study the feasible alternatives for its implementation such that it has minimal negative effects on business. The paper is suggestive of only the implementation of shift rotation practices in Supply chain operations of offshoring setups of manufacturing companies based on a review study.

Keywords: Shift Arrangement, Rotating Shift, Supply Chain, Offshoring, Manufacturing

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