A note taped to the delivery
The night shift arrives. On the litho press there is a half-finished run with a note taped to the delivery pile: 'Stopped at approx 6k, customer changing back page, DO NOT RUN'. On the folder, a job is stacked with no note at all. In the office, the day supervisor's notebook says the laminator was playing up and an engineer might come in the morning. Nobody on nights reads the notebook, because it is in the office.
In the morning, the day shift finds the folder job has been run on the wrong fold, because the night operator assumed it was ready, and the laminator was used all night on a job that should have waited.
Handover depends on who is standing at the door
Printers running two or three shifts depend on information passing cleanly between people who rarely overlap for long. When it goes well, it is because experienced people talk to each other. When it goes badly, it is because they did not.
- Handover notes are scattered: notebooks, sticky notes, whiteboards, messages on personal phones.
- Notes are not attached to the job, so the next person working on the job may not see them.
- Machine problems are mentioned but not logged where maintenance will find them.
- Counts on part-run jobs are estimates written on scrap paper.
- There is no record that the incoming shift read and understood the handover.
The night shift is also usually thinner, with fewer senior people around to ask, which means the notes carry more weight at exactly the time they are least reliable.
When handovers fail
A missed note means a job run when it should have waited, or waited when it should have run. Both cost press time and sometimes a reprint. Machine faults passed on verbally get worse because nobody logged them. Part-run counts that are wrong lead to shortages at finishing or overs that are wasted. And blame follows: day shift blames nights, nights blame days, and the actual gap, the handover itself, stays unfixed.
A handover log on the job and the machine
- At the end of a shift, each station shows the jobs it touched, with their status. The operator confirms counts and marks anything unfinished with a reason from a short list, plus a note.
- Holds, such as 'waiting for customer' or 'do not run', are set on the job itself, so any station trying to start it sees the hold.
- Machine issues are logged against the machine, with a photo if helpful, and appear on the maintenance list as well as the handover.
- The outgoing supervisor sees a summary of the shift: jobs finished, jobs part-done with counts, holds, machine issues and anything urgent for the next shift.
- The incoming supervisor reads and acknowledges the handover on a screen, and can ask a question that goes to the outgoing supervisor's phone.
- Every handover is stored, so patterns, such as the same machine fault every week, become visible.
| Information | Passed on today by | In the handover log |
|---|---|---|
| Part-run counts | Scrap paper | Confirmed at the station |
| Do not run | Note on the delivery | Hold on the job |
| Machine fault | Word of mouth | Logged on the machine |
| Urgent jobs for next shift | Chat at the door | Supervisor summary |
| Handover read? | Unknown | Acknowledged |
Shifts that pick up where the last left off
The incoming shift starts with a clear view of what is waiting, what is held and which machines have problems. Operators see holds on the job, not on a note that fell off. Maintenance hears about faults when they happen, not when they have become breakdowns. And when something does go wrong, the handover record shows what was known and when, which moves the conversation from blame to fixing the gap.
Do your shifts leave gaps?
- Handover notes are on paper or personal phones.
- A job has been run when it should have been held.
- Machine faults are mentioned but not logged.
- Part-run counts are guesses.
- Day and night shifts blame each other for mistakes.