Shift Management
ProAlert's shift management system defines the planned production windows, break schedules, and changeover periods that give OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) its denominator. Without shift context, OEE is calculated against raw clock time... and a 30-minute lunch break looks the same as 30 minutes of unplanned downtime. Shift management ensures every Availability calculation is honest about when the line was supposed to be running.
The bottom line: OEE without shift context is meaningless. ProAlert's shift system ensures your metrics are always calculated against planned production time... not raw clock time. A lunch break excluded from the Availability denominator gives you an OEE number you can actually compare shift-to-shift and plant-to-plant.
Why OEE Without Shift Context Is Misleading
-
Raw clock time inflates the Availability denominator.A press running a standard 8-hour shift with two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch has 7 hours of planned production time. OEE systems that calculate against the full 8-hour clock show a line that's 12.5% less efficient than it actually is. Over a month, this creates a false baseline that hides real improvement and obscures real problems.
-
Breaks and lunches inflate unplanned downtime numbers.When planned stops aren't tracked as planned downtime, they appear as unplanned downtime events in the data. Maintenance teams chasing downtime root causes waste time investigating "failures" that were scheduled breaks. Failure Pareto analysis becomes noise when planned stops pollute the unplanned downtime record.
-
Different assets run different schedules.A continuous press line in Building 1 runs three 8-hour shifts. An injection molding cell in Building 2 runs two 10-hour shifts. A packaging line runs Monday through Thursday only. A single global shift configuration produces wrong OEE denominators for every asset that deviates from the default.
-
Shift handoffs have no context record.When the second shift starts, there's no structured record of what the first shift produced, what issues occurred, or what's still open. The incoming supervisor learns the shift status from whoever they can find in the parking lot... which means they often don't learn it at all until they discover it themselves mid-shift.
Shift Configuration
Shifts are configured globally and can be overridden at the asset level. Every shift definition sets the planned production window that ProAlert uses as the Availability denominator for OEE calculations.
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| Shift Definitions | Define unlimited shift configurations with start time, duration, and days of week. Standard three-shift (1st/2nd/3rd), continental rotation, weekend-only, and custom schedules all supported. Shift definitions are named and reusable across assets and facilities. |
| Per-Asset Schedule Overrides | Override global shift times for specific assets on specific days. A maintenance asset that only runs Mondays, or a line that switches to a 10-hour schedule on high-demand weeks, gets its own shift assignment without affecting the default configuration for other assets. |
| Product Scheduling to Shifts | Assign scheduled products to shift slots. When an operator starts their shift on mobile, the app displays the products scheduled for this asset on this shift... eliminating the ambiguity of "what are we running today?" at shift start. |
| Schedule HUD (Heads-Up Display) | Real-time visual overview of asset status across all configured shifts. Supervisors see which assets are running, which are on planned stops, and which haven't been started within their scheduled window. ScheduledNotRunning discrepancy flags surface assets that should be running but haven't started. |
| Mobile Shift Start and Stop | Operators start and stop shifts from the mobile app or EdgeSense touchscreen. Shift start creates the production timeline record that establishes the planned-time denominator for the shift's OEE calculation. Shift stop finalizes the timeline and locks the shift's OEE data. |
Planned Downtime Management
Planned downtime is tracked separately from unplanned downtime and excluded from the Availability denominator. Every planned stop is a distinct record with start time, end time, duration, and type.
How Shift Data Feeds OEE
Shift management and OEE are not separate systems in ProAlert... they share the same database records. The production timeline created by shift management is the exact data source the OEE engine reads for Availability calculation.
| OEE Component | How Shift Data Contributes |
|---|---|
| Availability | Planned production time (shift duration minus planned downtime) is the denominator. Unplanned DT call duration is the numerator deduction. Availability = (Planned Time - Unplanned DT) / Planned Time. Lunch breaks and changeovers reduce Planned Time, not add to Unplanned DT. |
| Performance | Target cycles for the shift are calculated from the product's ideal cycle time and the planned production time defined by shift management. Without shift context, the target cycle count is wrong... and Performance is meaningless. |
| Live OEE During the Shift | OEE is recalculated and broadcast to all connected screens every 10 seconds throughout the shift using the current timeline state. As planned downtime periods are logged and unplanned DT calls are closed, the live OEE score updates in real time... not at shift end. |
See OEE calculated against planned production time, not raw clock time.
Book a 30-minute demo... we'll walk through shift configuration, planned downtime logging, and the live OEE update as a break starts and ends.