All Member Open Forum

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP

I'm sure there are probably studies on this topic but anecdotally, my experience is that 4-10's are higher productivity if you can manage to control callouts on the Friday off. On a daily basis, the 4-10 should be higher productivity as the "overhead" as a ratio of total work hours is lower. Consider you only have 4 30 min lunches, 4 safety meetings/morning briefings, etc. and the same number of total work hours. In an ideal world, you'd have your main maintenance staff executing scheduled work on a 4-10's basis and then a much smaller crew that works 24/7 to address E-jobs and protect the schedule. Without that kind of setup, you really need to have strong criteria on what requires a callout. The other thing you need to have is a supply of ready work - small jobs that can you can give to the craft at the end of the day if they finish their main job early. The 4-10 doesn't add productivity if everyone spends the last hour of the day in the shop because "there's not enough time to start a new job".

------------------------------
Matthew Hiatt
Hydrocarbons Senior Reliability Manager
Dow Chemical
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2025 11:16 AM
From: Larry Lawson
Subject: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP

Good topic Gordon.  I am currently at a plant with both work schedules in two different areas.  A lot of it really comes down to employee preference.  Some like getting off earlier to make their kids ballgames and stuff; others like not making a long drive one more day a week; and obviously a 3 day weekend every week is nice.

4-10s is efficient for the employees, saves money for them and can improve quality of life for some.  In today's world of not being able to find enough workers and some companies can't just offer more money, flexible work schedules can be another way to attract.

If you have a shift maint staff then breakin work at times when no staff is on site is not a big issue.  

The thought about losing the last hour of the day I don't think is as much an issue.  If you work 5 - 8s, the same stopping early in the day still occurs it just happens 5 times instead of 4.  There is one misaligned issue though.  When the maint salaried staff - planner and supervisor work 5 days, they are not aligned with the crew.  They don't want to stay long on 4 days with crew because they have to work Friday so in this case, you do risk losing productivity the last hour on 4-10s.  

Another consideration is if you have day shutdowns for maint work during the week.  With 4 10s, I would not want to do that on Thursdays because if there is followup on day after outage, no one is there on Fridays.  But this can be managed.

Overall, I like the 4-10 setup as I think the pros outweight the cons if the rest of the plant operation can supported.

------------------------------
Randy Riddell, CMRP, PSAP, CLS
Reliability Manager
Essity
Cherokee AL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2025 11:16 AM
From: Larry Lawson
Subject: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP

Original Message:
Sent: 1/31/2025 8:35:00 AM
From: Randy Riddell
Subject: RE: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Good topic Gordon.  I am currently at a plant with both work schedules in two different areas.  A lot of it really comes down to employee preference.  Some like getting off earlier to make their kids ballgames and stuff; others like not making a long drive one more day a week; and obviously a 3 day weekend every week is nice.

4-10s is efficient for the employees, saves money for them and can improve quality of life for some.  In today's world of not being able to find enough workers and some companies can't just offer more money, flexible work schedules can be another way to attract.

If you have a shift maint staff then breakin work at times when no staff is on site is not a big issue.  

The thought about losing the last hour of the day I don't think is as much an issue.  If you work 5 - 8s, the same stopping early in the day still occurs it just happens 5 times instead of 4.  There is one misaligned issue though.  When the maint salaried staff - planner and supervisor work 5 days, they are not aligned with the crew.  They don't want to stay long on 4 days with crew because they have to work Friday so in this case, you do risk losing productivity the last hour on 4-10s.  

Another consideration is if you have day shutdowns for maint work during the week.  With 4 10s, I would not want to do that on Thursdays because if there is followup on day after outage, no one is there on Fridays.  But this can be managed.

Overall, I like the 4-10 setup as I think the pros outweight the cons if the rest of the plant operation can supported.

------------------------------
Randy Riddell, CMRP, PSAP, CLS
Reliability Manager
Essity
Cherokee AL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2025 11:16 AM
From: Larry Lawson
Subject: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP

Yes, looked at various pattersn 4/10, 5/8, 9/80 etc. 4 x 10 hour days was expected to show higher productivity than 5 x 8 hour days for the type of plants we were analyzing. Reason was that every morning it would take quite some time to issue permits, authorise access to equipment etc. Once that was done the day would be on its way but in a 10 hour day more work could get done than in the 8 hour day. 12 hour shofts were found to have reduced productivity in the final hours and were only considered for shift maintenance to have 24/7 cover for breakdowns. Length of the working day plays a role in increaseing wrench time, but needs to be done in conjunction with having an effective planning & scheduling process, efficiency around issueing permits etc. 

------------------------------
Erik Hupje
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhupje/
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2025 11:16 AM
From: Larry Lawson
Subject: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP

Original Message:
Sent: 2/3/2025 3:37:00 PM
From: Erik Hupje
Subject: RE: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Yes, looked at various pattersn 4/10, 5/8, 9/80 etc. 4 x 10 hour days was expected to show higher productivity than 5 x 8 hour days for the type of plants we were analyzing. Reason was that every morning it would take quite some time to issue permits, authorise access to equipment etc. Once that was done the day would be on its way but in a 10 hour day more work could get done than in the 8 hour day. 12 hour shofts were found to have reduced productivity in the final hours and were only considered for shift maintenance to have 24/7 cover for breakdowns. Length of the working day plays a role in increaseing wrench time, but needs to be done in conjunction with having an effective planning & scheduling process, efficiency around issueing permits etc. 

------------------------------
Erik Hupje
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhupje/
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-29-2025 11:16 AM
From: Larry Lawson
Subject: Work Schedules for Plant Maintenance Technicians

Team,

Has anyone ever seen or produced a study that identifies the pros and cons of a 4/10 vs a 5/8 work schedule for Mechanical and I&E Maintenance Technicians in an industrial plant. Out plants operate on a 7/24 schedule.

Thanks.

Gordon Lawson, CMRP