How should shift handover work?

Short answer: it should be written, walked and signed. The outgoing lead fills one page during the last hour. Both leads walk the presses or lines together during the overlap. Both sign. Once a week, somebody reads the pages hunting for faults that keep returning.

What usually happens instead is a sentence at the time clock. The outgoing lead says press seven is fine apart from a bit of flash, and leaves for the bus. Around midnight the flash has become a stopped mould, and the incoming crew is solving a problem that was half solved six hours earlier.

• Machine state. The mould or die on each machine, the lot in the hopper, and any setting changed during the shift, with the reason.
• Open faults. Anything drifting: flash creeping back at the parting line, a heater band reading low, a chiller tripping, a thermocouple giving odd readings, a winder alarm that cleared itself.
• Parts on hold. Bins or rolls tagged for quarantine, where they sit and who decides whether they are sorted, reground or scrapped.
• Material and utilities. Dryer hours on the next lot, the regrind ratio in use, masterbatch dosing, cooling tower and compressor complaints.
• People. Who is absent on the incoming shift, who is new, who was moved between machines and who is serving notice.
• Promises. A customer trial, a dispatch due before the morning truck, a mould expected back from the tool room.

Date, shift, outgoing lead and incoming lead.
For each press or line: mould or die on, material lot, and running well, drifting or stopped.
Settings changed this shift, by whom and why.
Open faults the incoming shift must watch, with the first thing to check.
Quarantined parts or rolls: location, tag number and who will decide.
Dryer, chiller, compressor or crane trouble.
Absences, new joiners and moves on the incoming shift.
Customer promises falling before the next handover.
Walk-round done jointly, ticked or left blank.
Signature of outgoing lead. Countersignature of incoming lead.

1. 1

   In the last hour, the outgoing lead writes

   Not at the clock. Filled while the shift still runs, the page reflects the floor rather than a tired memory.

2. 2

   During the overlap, both leads walk

   Machine by machine. The incoming lead reads each entry while looking at the press or line it describes.

3. 3

   Questions come before signatures

   The incoming lead may hold off signing until a point is clear. A held signature is noted on the page, not argued in the aisle.

4. 4

   Countersign and leave the page at the shift office

   Both names go on it. The page stays in a file at the office, not in somebody's pocket.

5. 5

   The day technician reads nights first

   Before the morning meeting, the technician or production head reads the night page and acts on any setting change.

• A thermocouple on one barrel zone reading oddly, so the controller overheats the melt.
• A quick-coupling dripping onto the platen, or a weeping hydraulic seal under the clamp.
• An ejector pin sticking every few hundred cycles.
• Die lip build-up on the film line, or screen changer pressure creeping upward.
• Haul-off tracks slipping on the pipe line after a size change.
• A granulator with blunt blades, turning sprues into dust instead of regrind.
• A dryer alarm silenced at three in the morning and never mentioned.

A log nobody reads turns into a ritual. Once a week the production head takes seven days of pages. Anything appearing twice or more gets marked: the same press, fault, material lot or crew. Those carry-over items go on a short repair list, each with one named owner and a target day.

A fault that appears on three nights running has stopped being a shift problem. It belongs to maintenance, the tool room or the resin supplier. The deep-dive on why handover is where problems start covers the cost side of this. The shift and leave process for injection moulding shows where the log sits inside rostering.

Someone either stays on or arrives early, so decide openly whether the overlap sits inside shift hours. Leads who give minutes unpaid every day eventually stop giving them. Building a short overlap into the roster, or staggering lead start times against the crew, keeps the walk-round from depending on goodwill.

Name a deputy lead per shift in the roster, in advance. On the night a lead is off, the deputy writes and signs. If nobody is named, the page goes blank on exactly the nights when the floor is thinnest and handover matters most.

Give each press a small card in a sleeve, with three lines: what changed, what to watch, what is on hold. Operators fill it at changeover and the incoming operator initials it. It is quicker than the lead's log and catches the detail a lead walking twelve machines cannot carry.

Start on paper, because paper is visible on the floor and easy to sign. Messages on a phone group are fine for an urgent alert but scatter the record and carry no countersignature. Once the habit holds for a few months, moving the log into HR or production software makes the weekly read faster.

Print the log, run it on every shift for a fortnight and hold the first weekly read. Expect the early pages to be thin. They fill out once leads see that what they write gets fixed. The hub for plastics units sets handover beside the other pressures in these units. To get help designing the routine, describe your own floor on the requirements form.