Short version. Spot the peak in the bid pipeline long before trucks arrive. Fix who works extra hours, and where. Book briefed temporary hands for simple stations only. Shield inspection. Then spend the lull teaching. Each step is ordinary. What goes wrong is usually timing: the floor learns of the letter of award on the day material arrives.
Peaks in this group take two shapes. Tender peaks follow a hospital or state award, often with delivery staggered to many district sites. Export peaks follow a container cut-off, with pre-shipment inspection by the buyer's agent a few days earlier. Both squeeze the same scarce people. Our hub for medical device and equipment people issues ties these peaks to skill scarcity.
Why does the floor always hear late?
Bids, rate contracts and buyer forecasts sit with the owner and sales. Production sees a purchase order only when it is signed. Yet most tenders have a technical opening, a price opening and an award, each with a date. An export buyer usually shares a rolling forecast. Fifteen minutes each Monday over that pipeline, production head and HR seated beside sales, buys weeks of warning that otherwise evaporate.
What should be decided at bid stage?
- 1
Translate the bid into stations
List the stations each likely order will strain. Welding jigs and powder-coat lines for Fowler beds. Band sealers and the EtO chamber for disposables. CMM hours for implants. Burn-in racks for monitors.
- 2
Name the bottleneck people
Usually one inspector, one setter or one tester. Decide now who will back them up, and start that person's training this week.
- 3
Draft the overtime rota
Who is willing, who has family limits, who did the last peak. Rotate it, limit back-to-back long shifts, and pin it up before a single person is approached.
- 4
Build the temporary list
Names of past temporary hands from your simple stations, each annotated with tasks done and quality shown.
- 5
Book the lull
Pencil in training slots for the fortnight after dispatch, so the quiet period has a purpose before it arrives.
Export peaks bring one extra wrinkle. Sterile disposables usually need their EtO cycle and aeration days complete before any container is stuffed. That pushes the real deadline for moulding and pouch sealing a week or more ahead of the vessel date, sometimes longer when the steriliser is shared with another plant. Work backwards from the cut-off, mark the sterilisation window on the rota, and plan packing shifts around it.
Which work can temporary hands do?
- Suitable: cartoning, palletising, shrink-wrapping, label application under a checker, castor and side-rail assembly on bed frames with a lead fitter nearby, cleaning and stores runs.
- Only with a trained partner: pouch sealing, ultrasonic cleaning logs, powder-coat hanging.
- Never: box-lock fitting, hollow grinding, mould changes, CMM inspection, hi-pot or calibration tests, final release signatures.
Brief every temporary hand on the lot traveller and line clearance on their first morning, even for packing. Most export rejections at pre-shipment inspection come from simple things: mixed lots in one carton, a smudged label, a count that does not reconcile.
How do we keep overtime fair?
Floors judge fairness on three counts. Can everyone see the rota? Do requests skip around rather than landing on the usual faces? Does extra-hours money arrive correct and punctual? A written rota with names and dates, rotated across peaks, quietens most complaints. Track who worked each peak so the next one starts with someone else. Rosters for crews that swell and shrink are covered in shift and leave set-up for bed and trolley fabricators.
Using the quiet fortnight
The quiet weeks after dispatch are when masters have time to teach and the floor has room for paired lots. Use them for the sign-offs that the peak showed were missing. Review the peak honestly: which stations held, which inspector carried the most load, which temporary hands were good enough to call again. Then update the temporary list and the bottleneck list. Several cycles later it hardens into a standing plan. For crews tied to hospital construction cycles, see headcount planning in bed fabrication.
Should we hire permanently for repeated peaks?
When identical stations buckle every peak, yes, starting with bottleneck roles. A second inspector or tester costs less over a year than the rework, delays and burnout of relying on one. Reserve inspectors and quiet-month planning get fuller treatment in our piece on tender and export bursts. Sizing a core team against several years of orders is part of our workforce planning projects.
