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Demurrage nearly eliminated, night-shift recovery up, turnover down

Demurrage nearly eliminated, night-shift recovery up, turnover down

The Krusteaz Company

Food & Beverage

Demurrage

nearly eliminated in the warehouse, with overtime down

OT down

warehouse overtime dropped significantly

Nights

more quality days off and better alertness

The problem

The Krusteaz Company's Hopkinsville plant had moved from Monday to Friday to a continuous 12-hour, every-other-weekend-off pattern years earlier. Employees kept raising concerns about fatigue, and turnover had climbed for five years. Health and safety mattered from day one: night crews reported almost an hour less sleep on work nights than day crews (about 1.5 hours less for maintenance nights), and night shift reported more operational issues and near misses. The warehouse's 24/7 schedule never matched its workload. Monday, which the plant had hoped would get a production boost from a Saturday-through-Monday weekend crew, was instead a low-attendance, low-uptime day. Some employees and supervisors assumed any alternative would be too hard to work and manage.

What we did

  • Analyzed line uptime by day and shift, workforce-to-workload mismatch, absenteeism, and turnover, giving management a clear map of production downtime
  • Surveyed salaried and hourly employees on schedules, sleep, safety, and preference against CCG norms
  • Dropped the Saturday-through-Monday three-day weekend option after the data and the survey both rejected it, and offered the Friday-through-Sunday pattern employees preferred
  • Designed department-specific 12-hour alternatives that raised quality days off for night shift, especially maintenance nights
  • Relied on a decisive plant management team to choose models, communicate, and time the rollout

The results

  • Almost all demurrage eliminated in the warehouse, with overtime down significantly on schedules matched to demand
  • More quality days off and better recovery for night-shift employees, with the largest gain on maintenance nights
  • Decreased turnover and better night-shift alertness within about six months
  • Management used the operations findings to target downtime and process improvements (estimated multimillion-dollar opportunities in labor mismatch, absenteeism, and turnover; not all capturable)
  • Survey-led choices: some groups kept a version of the current pattern; packaging and processing nights, and maintenance nights, moved to alternatives with more quality days off
Approximately six months after implementing the new schedules, we're seeing clear improvements: night shift employees report better alertness, turnover has decreased, and feedback on longer recovery periods has been positive. In the warehouse, we adopted schedules that align better to our business needs, and overtime has dropped significantly.

Kevin Maynard, Plant Manager, Krusteaz

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