Digitizing shift, leave and occupational safety processes in factories

Factory process management is the way of working that governs, in multi-shift production, who works which shift, who approves overtime, and how occupational safety incidents are recorded and closed. When the shift plan lives in a spreadsheet, overtime in phone calls and the near-miss report in a notebook, three separate arrangements run unaware of one another, and none of them can be trusted to be current.

In this article we divide a production day into three moments and describe what can be moved online at each one: the plan before the shift starts, incident recording during the shift, and overtime and closure after the shift ends.

Before the shift starts: plan, assignment and conflicts

The shift plan is the backbone of production; when the plan breaks, the crew is short and the line slows. In the Shift & Overtime Planning module, daily, weekly and monthly shifts are created on a calendar and staff are assigned to each shift, so who works which shift is visible in a single plan. Assignments are checked for conflicts. For example, if the same person is entered in two shifts at the same hours, it is noticed and corrected before the plan is published. When the plan changes later, the change is notified to the employees concerned, so nobody has to hear about their new shift from someone else. Because the operations manager who prepares the plan, the HR person who handles overtime approval and the employee who learns their shift all work from the same record, the question “which one is the current plan?” goes away.

Leave requests are another factor that can upset the shift plan. In KurumsalPortal, requesting and approving leave is one of the actions an employee can perform from the phone browser without installing an app; leave management and shift planning run on the same user, permission and notification infrastructure.

How is overtime managed?

1. The request is recorded: overtime is opened as a recorded request, not by phone or by word of mouth.
2. Approval is given: the request goes through an approval step, and which overtime was requested and approved is tracked.
3. Plan and reports side by side: approved overtime appears alongside the shift plan, in the same view and the same reports, so operations managers and HR know at any moment which overtime is approved.

During the shift: incidents, near misses and hazardous situations

In a factory, risk often hides in events that do not end in injury: a sliding pallet, a guard left open, a slippery floor. In the OHS Incident / Near Miss Management module, work accidents, near misses and hazardous situations are recorded in the same system, with the location where the event happened and a photo. Because events without injury are recorded too, risks become visible before they turn into accidents.

A near miss is the record of a moment when no accident happened but could have. If it is not written down, that moment disappears as if it never occurred, as far as occupational safety is concerned.

The module’s target users include not only OHS specialists and site managers but all employees. This lays the ground for reporting to stop being the job of supervisors alone and become a step anyone in the field can take; the record does not depend on the shift supervisor’s memory or on a form filled in at the end of the month.

A fictional example: on the night shift, an operator notices a pallet sliding at the warehouse entrance. Nobody is hurt and the line keeps running. The operator records the event from the phone browser with the location and a photo. In the morning the OHS specialist reviews the record, determines that the stacking arrangement is the root cause, and assigns a corrective action to the warehouse supervisor. When the action is completed, its evidence is attached and the record closes. A risk that became visible without an accident is closed without an accident.

After the shift ends: root cause and closure with evidence

The real work starts after the event is recorded. The record enters a review flow, and these steps are followed so that the same mistake does not repeat:

1. Record the event: with location and photo, within the shift.
2. Review it: the location and photo in the record are the basis for the review.
3. Analyze the root cause: the real reason that led to the event is established.
4. Assign an action: a corrective action against the root cause is given to someone responsible.
5. Close with evidence: every action is closed with evidence, and the result is reflected in the closure report.

What ties the three moments together is the shared infrastructure. The shift plan, the overtime request and the OHS record share the same user, permission and notification structure, and a role defined for an employee applies the same way in every module. So you do not have to roll out the modules all at once. Starting with the flow that costs the most time, for example shift changes or near-miss records, also makes it easier for employees to get used to the new way of working.

Three questions to ask before you start

• How is overtime requested today, and who approves it, through which channel?
• Who can report a near miss in the field, or can only supervisors do it?
• Is data sharing with a PDKS (attendance control) device or a payroll system needed? KurumsalPortal runs independently and does not offer a ready-made PDKS or payroll integration; if such a flow is needed, we define its scope together in the needs analysis.

You can look at your shift arrangement and overtime flow in detail on Shift & Overtime Planning, and at incident and near-miss records on OHS Incident / Near Miss Management.