The ten minutes of shift handover that shape a whole shift

A shift produces not only parts, but also knowledge. Which machine has been running at its limit for hours. Which order was put back because of missing parts. Which fix helped with the breakdown in the afternoon and which did not. Who from the team had to leave early today and why the station was unmanned at the end.

This knowledge sits in the heads of the people who are just going home. If it is not handed over, the next shift has to acquire it anew, by trial and error, by asking around or by having the same breakdown again.

What typically disappears:

• Faults that were "somehow" fixed without the cause being clear.
• Temporary fixes that someone installed and nobody knows about.
• Orders put back and the reason for it.
• Quality anomalies that have not yet led to a hold, but should be watched.
• Commitments to maintenance, logistics or planning that the next shift would have to keep.

Each of these points costs the next shift time, often hours. And the handover takes minutes. Hardly any investment in the plant has a better ratio.

The informal exchange between two shift leaders has one advantage: it is fast and personal. But it has three weaknesses that make it fail in everyday life.

It depends on two people. If one of them is absent, on a break or dealing with a fault at that moment, it does not take place. It depends on memory. Anyone reporting from memory after eight hours of night shift forgets the most important thing, because it happened six hours ago. And it has no place. What was said afterwards exists only in two heads. The employee at the station learns nothing of it if his shift leader does not carry it further.

There is a second reflex that fails just as badly: the handover form. A sheet with many fields, filled in at the end of the shift and put in a folder. I have leafed through such folders. They are completely filled in and never read. The form fulfils a regulation, but no purpose. The handover has become a document instead of a conversation.

A handover that holds is short, has a fixed place and always follows the same sequence. The pattern that has proved itself in my projects has four components.

The place: a board at the line, visible to all, not in the foreman's office. It shows the current status per machine and per order, with a traffic light or cards, so simple that it can be grasped in a minute.

The sequence: first safety, then quality, then machines, then orders, then staff. Always the same, so that nothing is forgotten and the listeners know what comes next.

The participants: both shift leaders and the people who work at the stations concerned. Not the whole shift, but those for whom the information is relevant. The handover at the board takes a few minutes, after which the pairs at each station go briefly to their machine.

The addendum: the handover is prepared during the shift, not at the end. Whoever fixes a fault hangs the card on the board immediately. Whoever puts an order back writes the reason next to it. At the end of the shift nothing is reconstructed any more, only what is already hanging there is explained.

A plant with several machining lines introduced exactly this after the early shift had repeatedly been unaware of the night shift's temporary fixes. The decisive step was not the board, but the rule that every temporary fix is marked there immediately. Since then the early shift no longer begins with a search.

Many plants pay for an overlap between shifts so that there is time for the handover. That is the right idea, and it only works if this time is actually used for the handover. In practice it is often eaten up by the changing room, the coffee machine and the fault of the moment. The overlap is then a cost block with no return.

If you have an overlap, you should know what happens in it. Stand next to the board at a shift change once and observe without intervening. What you see is usually more honest than any report.

And if you have no overlap, you need the board all the more. Then it is the only medium in which the outgoing shift can tell the incoming one anything. The rule of documenting during the shift then becomes a condition, not a recommendation.

A handover only works if the outgoing shift has an interest in the incoming one starting well. That is not a given. In some plants there is a silent competition between the shifts: who made more parts, who got the difficult orders, who leaves the machine in what condition. In this climate, the handover is a place where nobody gives anything away.

Plant management decides on this climate, whether it wants to or not. If shift KPIs are compared against each other, if the night shift's fault is charged to the early shift, if temporary fixes bring only trouble instead of recognition for reporting them, then there is no handover. There is just wrapping up.

So it is part of a good handover that leadership visibly values it. The plant manager who occasionally stands at the board at six and listens says more with that than any instruction. And whoever briefly picks up the previous day's handover in the shop floor meeting makes it part of the system, not a duty on the sidelines.

Choose a line where the shift changes create noticeable friction. Observe two or three handovers without intervening. Note what is said, what is asked and what the new shift had to find out for itself in the first hour.

Then sit down with the shift leaders and let them design the board and the sequence themselves. The draft does not have to be perfect. It has to come from the people who will use it. After two weeks, look together at what is missing and what is superfluous.

The handover is the smallest process in the plant with the greatest leverage. It costs minutes and saves hours, every day, in every shift. And it shows the workforce something that no programme can show: that the work of one shift counts for the other.