Agile Organization of Shift Work without Shift Models

Whereas agility of white-collar work is a common and successful concept, blue-collar work is in many cases still organized in shifts following long-term plans. Shift models are very uncomfortable to humans in two ways: first, working hours are spread over the whole day, in many cases over the whole week as “24/7 operations”, and second, the start and end times of the shifts are fixed. The concept of flextime is very uncommon on the shop floor, unimaginable to white collars. Therefore, blue collars ask more and more for flexible labour hours also to achieve a better work-life balance.An approach to a more agile organization of shift work is to substitute the shift model by self-assignment of shifts through the workers. Instead of working along fixed plans, employees may self-assign to different working hours and shifts from day to day, according to their individual preferences and availability. Smart devices seem to be an enabler for the agile organization of shift work. Several commercial apps with self-services for the planning of shifts and working hours are still offered, which may be appropriate for this reason.Agile shift work without predefined shift models may increase the flexibility of the company as well as the work-life balance of the workers. The concept promises to be useful. In practice, a lot of questions arise: What if different workers apply for the same shift? Who gets the shift, first come, first serve? Are there rules to calculate priorities? Is the team responsible to solve the situation or the supervisor? What if no one takes over a shift? Obviously, agile organization of shift work needs a thoroughly defined organization, and obviously too, the workers themselves must be involved in the process of defining this organization, to gain acceptance by them.Developing an organizational framework for agile shift work without shift models is one of the main topics of the German research project “agileASSEMBLY”, which comprises twelve industrial and scientific partners. The framework consists of a target image about the expected achievements, a process blueprint that guides the employees step by step in balancing and synchronizing their individual working applications, and a concise set of rules to solve conflicts in the self-assignment of working hours. The approach of the project is to involve employees in the development of the new framework for the agile organization of assembly processes by means of a role play. Within this paper, the framework for the self-assignment of working hours will be presented. It displays the first step and result of “agileASSEMBLY”. Subsequently, a pilot implementation, operation, and evaluation of the achievements and human factors in a team with round about 45 employees are planned to prove the success expectations of the concept.