Order peaks arrive in bursts: a fix for electrical makers

On Monday half the bays are empty and wiremen are sorting lugs in the stores. By Thursday a water board tender has been awarded, the consultant has approved drawings for forty motor control cubicles and the dispatch date carries a penalty clause. Ferruling and lugging begin on every bench. Helpers arrive from a labour contractor. Three weeks on, finished panels stand in a row outside the test bay and the only test engineer is still there at midnight.

That lurch is the second pattern named on the people page for electrical equipment makers. It is baked into the trade. Tenders, consultants and project timelines dictate the load. What a shop can control is whether each burst catches it unawares.

• Overtime spikes the week drawings are approved, not the week the order is won.
• Contract helpers handle ferruling, glanding and labelling after an hour of watching.
• Bought-out breakers, drives and relays land late, so wiring is crammed into a final fortnight.
• The test bay becomes the last queue, with insulation and functional checks trimmed to make the truck.
• Leave is cancelled, and the people who had booked trains home remember it for months.

Hurried testing costs most. A cubicle that ships with a slack termination or a faulty interlock is discovered at commissioning, hundreds of kilometres away and in front of the client's engineer. A site visit to fix it eats days.

Hurried hiring follows. People taken on in a panic either drift away when the rush ends or stay with habits nobody corrected. The quietest cost falls on the steady hands. A skilled wireman who has lived through three surprise crunches in one year starts asking friends about shops with flatter order books.

• Headcount mirrors last month. The shop staffs to what it just built, not to what has been quoted and is likely to land.
• Sales guards the tender list. Planning learns of a big order when the purchase order is emailed.
• Testing is a final step, not a capacity. Nobody counts test hours when a delivery date is promised.
• Scarce and easy skills are lumped together. The shop recruits helpers when the real gap is a second test engineer.
• Overtime has no ceiling. Asking the same six people to stay is easier than planning.

• Plot last year's overtime hours against the dispatch dates of large orders.
• Ask sales for every open tender and the month a decision is expected.
• Count the people who can run the full routine test set on a cubicle unaided.
• List the contract helpers from the last two bursts and how many came back.
• Find the panels that failed at commissioning and the week each was tested.

An afternoon with the overtime register and the dispatch diary usually shows the rhythm plainly. Most shops discover their bursts are more predictable than they felt.

1. 1

   Hold one load meeting a month

   Sales, planning, production and test sit with the order book and the open tender list. Each probable order becomes hours by trade: sheet work, busbar, wiring, testing and site.

2. 2

   Mark scarce skills and quick ones

   Test engineers, senior wiremen and busbar benders are scarce. Labelling, glanding and packing can be added within days. Plan the two groups separately.

3. 3

   Keep a trained bench for scarce work

   Cross-train two or three fitters on routine tests and on reading the test sheet. In quiet months they build panels; in a burst they test under supervision.

4. 4

   Begin the test engineer search early

   A capable test engineer takes weeks to find and settle. Open the role when the tender pipeline climbs, and use a practical trial on a real cubicle. Recruitment process consulting can set up that route.

5. 5

   Fix overtime ceilings before the rush

   Agree weekly limits per person, a protected rest day and who may approve extra hours. Share them with the floor when drawings arrive.

6. 6

   Give contract helpers a proper first morning

   Safety rules, the labelling standard and one named wireman who checks their work. Keep them on narrow tasks.

7. 7

   Review every burst after dispatch

   Compare planned with actual hours, then look at test holds, commissioning snags and who resigned. Carry the lessons into the next load meeting.

The control panel makers' page covers the swing between idle days and late nights in one-off cubicle work. Its note on shifts, leave and overtime shows a shared dispatch calendar feeding rosters and leave. The owner's direct question is answered in staffing for tender-driven peaks.