Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid
Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid
Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid
Ebook285 pages2 hours

Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

This book is for shiftwork schedulers and for teams involved in fatigue risk management systems (FRMS) for 24/7 operations. The book covers shift lengths from four to 24 hours, and numbers of crews from one to five. Shift plan examples include 4-, 6-, 8- 12- and 24-hour shift lengths, split-crew plans, a plan for part-time workers, and eight-plus-twelve-hour shift length combination plans. The Continental, Metropolitan, Panama, DuPont, oilfield/offshore, maritime watchstanding (classic and "close") and other known shiftwork plans (rotas) are assessed critically. I have updated the sections on sleep and fatigue physiology and fatigue countermeasures and added information on FRMS.

As far as I can determine, this is the most comprehensive, non-proprietary explanation of shiftwork scheduling available on the market. It should probably be in the library of every individual or team responsible for the scheduling of 24/7 operations. It may also be used as an inspection tool to help determine whether shiftwork-induced fatigue or shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) may have been a contributing factor in an accident. The book contains 155 scientific and technical references.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 29, 2013
ISBN9781301961894
Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid
Author

James C. Miller

I conducted 45 years of applied research and development concerning human cognitive performance and fatigue. I focused mainly on the measurement and analysis of human physical and cognitive performance in military and civil aviation; highway, rail and maritime transportation; and night and shift work. Operator fatigue was at the center of my interests after my days as an Air Force pilot in the C-130E Hercules tactical transport in Vietnam. I'm also the author of "Fatigue" in McGraw-Hill's Controlling Pilot Error series (2001), and the ASIS CRISP report "Fatigue Effects and Countermeasures in 24/7 Security Operations" (2010). In 2018-2021 I taught Physiology as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Life Sciences, Texas &M University-Corpus Christi.

Read more from James C. Miller

Related to Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition

Titles in the series (4)

View More

Related ebooks

Human Resources & Personnel Management For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Fundamentals of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition - James C. Miller

    Fundamentals Of Shiftwork Scheduling, 3rd Edition: Fixing Stupid

    James C. Miller, Ph.D., CPE

    Published by James C. Miller at Smashwords

    Copyright 2013 James C. Miller

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of the author.

    PREFACE

    This book is for shiftwork schedulers and for teams involved in fatigue risk management systems (FRMS) for 24/7 operations. The book covers shift lengths from four to 24 hours, and numbers of crews from one to five. Shift plan examples include 4-, 6-, 8- 12- and 24-hour shift lengths, split-crew plans, a plan for part-time workers, and eight-plus-twelve-hour shift length combination plans. The Continental, Metropolitan, Panama, DuPont, oilfield/offshore, maritime watchstanding (classic and close) and other known shiftwork plans (rotas) are assessed critically. I have updated the sections on sleep and fatigue physiology and fatigue countermeasures and added information on FRMS.

    As far as I can determine, this is the most comprehensive, non-proprietary explanation of shiftwork scheduling available on the market. It should probably be in the library of every individual or team responsible for the scheduling of 24/7 operations. It may also be used as an inspection tool to help determine whether shiftwork-induced fatigue or shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) may have been a contributing factor in an accident. The book contains 155 scientific and technical references.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Preface

    Introduction

    SECTION 1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

    Shiftwork Defined

    Sleep

    Effects of Inadequate Sleep

    Circadian Rhythm Effects

    The Circasemidian Rhythm and the Siesta

    The Character of Fatigue

    Biology and Shiftwork

    Calendar Arithmetic for Shiftwork Scheduling

    Work Compression

    DSNO Terminology

    SECTION 2. SCHEDULING

    Introduction to Shiftwork Scheduling

    People

    - Number of Crews

    - Employment Ratio

    Time

    - Shift Type

    - Shift Length

    -- Four-Hour Shifts

    -- Six-Hour Shifts

    -- 24-Hour Shifts

    - Shift Overlap

    Basic Structure

    - Shift Systems

    - Shift Plans (Rotas)

    Shift Interactions

    - Shift Differentials

    - Shift Alignment

    - Shift Change Times

    Principles for Planning

    - Minimum Consecutive Night Shifts

    - Recovery after Each Night Shift

    - At Least 104 Days Off per Year

    - Circadian Stability

    - Shiftworker Satisfaction: Equity

    - Shiftworker Satisfaction: Predictability

    - Shiftworker Satisfaction: Good Quality of Time Off

    Scheduling Methods

    SECTION 3. EXAMPLES

    Four-Crew Solutions

    - Plans with Eight-Hour Shifts

    - Plans with Twelve-Hours Shifts

    - Complex Four-Crew Plans

    The Five-Crew Solution

    Three-Crew Solutions

    - Plans with Four- or Eight-Hour Shifts

    - Plan with Six-Hour Shifts

    - Plan with Twelve-Hour Shifts

    - Complex Three-Crew Plans

    Two-Crew Solutions

    One-Crew Solutions

    A Part-Time Worker Solution

    Solving a Simple Four-Crew Problem

    SECTION 4. FATIGUE COUNTERMEASURES

    Personal Countermeasures

    Engineering and Administrative Countermeasures

    Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRMS)

    SECTION 5. ASSESSMENT METHODS

    Predicting Fatigue Effects Quantitatively

    Gathering Data

    Direct Measurement Methods

    Semi-Quantitative Analysis

    Indirect Measurement Methods

    SECTION 6. SUMMARY

    SECTION 7. GLOSSARY

    SECTION 8. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

    Additional Reading

    Acknowledgements

    References

    SECTION 9. FORMS

    Work Demand Table

    Shift Lag Table

    Shift Alignment Table

    Fatigue Checkcard

    Shiftworker Satisfaction Survey

    Epworth Sleepiness Scale

    USAFSAM Mental Fatigue Scale

    Karolinska Sleepiness Scale

    Stanford Sleepiness Scale

    # # #

    About the Author

    INTRODUCTION

    According to American comedian Ron White, You can't fix stupid! (36). Working at night and trying to sleep during the day often makes workers stupid. This book provides the technical expertise needed by employers and schedulers to avoid stupefying their night workers.

    Consider the following definitions of the word stupid from various on-line dictionaries:

    - Merriam-Webster: slow of mind, obtuse, given to unintelligent decisions or acts, acting in an unintelligent or careless manner, lacking intelligence or reason, dulled in feeling or sensation, torpid, marked by … unreasoned thinking or acting, senseless (a stupid decision).

    - Webster: lacking or marked by lack of intellectual acuity, in a state of mental numbness, lacking intelligence, very dull, wanting in understanding, sluggish, in a state of stupor.

    - American Heritage: slow to learn or understand, obtuse, tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes, marked by a lack of intelligence or care, foolish or careless; dazed, stunned, or stupefied.

    Personal experience teaches us that these problems are also symptoms of the effects of sleep loss and mental fatigue. Additionally, they align well with more formal descriptions of the symptoms of mental fatigue, as shown in the following table.

    When stupefied, human operators become the weakest link in a human-machine system and the whole system may fail or produce erroneous results because of that weakness. A good shiftwork schedule is an important administrative tool for minimizing the prevalence of operator stupidity when there is a demand for a 24/7 work schedule.

    This book is designed for use by shiftwork schedulers, managers, supervisors, employees, and fatigue risk management teams. It defines nine principles and ten components of a method of shiftwork scheduling for regular, cyclic shifts that can minimize expected fatigue effects in the workplace caused by 24/7 operations. Section 1 provides basic information concerning sleep, circadian rhythms and fatigue, so that the implications of various scheduling components and principles may be understood. In Section 2, I discuss ten schedule components and employ nine scheduling principles. Paying attention to these principles and components should help you to design a reasonable schedule for supporting 24/7 operations or to assess the quality of an existing schedule.

    A number of examples of plans are provided in Section 3 with objective assessments of their qualities. Section 4 discusses various options of countering the effects of fatigue in the workplace, including FRMS. Section 5 presents methods of assessment for the adequacy of present and planned shiftwork schedules. This section contains links to data forms placed at the back of the book. If the forms are not reproducible adequately, full-size copies are available from the author. The book ends with a summary of the shiftwork Principles and components and some scheduling recommendations.

    The numbers in parentheses at the ends of sentences indicate citations of 155 scientific and technical publications listed in the References section. For more in-depth information about many of the subjects covered here, see Shiftwork: An Annotated Bibliography, containing more than 680 references (86). The references cited in the annotated bibliography address the design of shiftwork schedules and the effects of shiftwork on safety, health and human performance in many work environments. The annotated bibliography is also available as a PDF file at Smashwords.

    SECTION 1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

    SHIFTWORK DEFINED

    [S]hift work refers to any nonstandard work schedule. It includes evening or night work; a rotating shift, in which hours change regularly (e.g., from day to evening to night); a split shift, in which a period of work is followed by a break and then a return to work; and extended duty hours, consisting of long periods of work (usually over 12 hours) (105). Work may be classified as follows (125):

    - Systems without night or weekend work; this is the nine-to-five weekday-only job,

    - Systems with night work but without weekend work, or

    - Systems with both night and weekend work, or continuous shiftwork. These systems are also called 24/7 systems.

    Within the 24/7 domain, we may classify systems as:

    - Regular, fixed;

    - Regular, rotating; for example, four crews with rotating eight-hour shifts; or

    - Irregular, i.e., varying numbers of crews and shift lengths; for example, the five-day irregular work week of U.S. Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers, or the irregular schedules flown by air transport crews.

    The only subjects addressed in this book are regular fixed and regular rotating schedules. However, a better understanding of regular schedules should improve your ability to schedule irregular shiftwork. Because of its complexity, irregular shiftwork scheduling requires resources beyond the scope of this book. A number of commercial enterprises provide software and technical support for this kind of scheduling. To find the available resources, search the Web with the keywords shiftwork (and shift work) and rostering.

    If you are to understand many of the significant problems caused by the decision to work at night and try to sleep during the day, you need to have a basic understanding of the biology of sleep, of circadian rhythms and of the nature of fatigue. Some basic information is presented here.

    SLEEP

    Sleep is not a passive or vegetative state, as many assume. It is generated by complex activities in the brain. To emphasize this point, consider several complexities of sleep physiology.

    - Three kinds of sleep are identifiable with scalp electrodes (electroencephalogram, EEG). They are slow-wave sleep (SWS; sleep stages 3 and 4), rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, and stage 2 sleep. Generally, about half of a good-quality, normal night of sleep is spent in stage 2, while SWS and REM each occupy somewhat less than one-quarter of the night, and the remainder of the night is made up of drowsiness (stage 1) and wakefulness (stage 0) (117,151).

    - The occurrence of SWS is associated with a release of growth hormone from the brain (147). Thus, we assume that SWS is a period during which some repair of muscle and nerve cells occurs, following their use during the preceding waking period(s).

    - The occurrence of sleep is associated with memory consolidation (13,14).

    - The proportions of sleep time spent in SWS and REM sleep depend quite a bit upon the degree and nature of sleep debt.

    - The sleep stages mentioned above occur in an orderly manner with a 90-min cycle. When you first fall asleep in the evening and sleep through the night, you pass quickly through stages 1 and 2 into much-needed SWS. Eventually, you return to stage 2 and may generate some REM sleep. This cycle takes about 90 minutes. The cycle is repeated throughout the night with relatively less SWS and relatively more REM sleep as morning approaches. Five 90-minute cycles occur across 7½ hours. These five cycles plus some falling-asleep and waking-up times lead you to spend about eight hours in bed. A rough depiction of the 90-minute sleep cycle is illustrated here.

    Rough approximation of an eight-hour sleep histogram, showing the 90-minute cycle of sleep stages that occurs throughout the night.

    Sleep Regulation. The brain regulates the amount of sleep that we need. This regulation operates somewhat like the thermostat on a furnace or air conditioner, generating a condition known as homeostasis: the ability or tendency of an organism or cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes (American Heritage Dictionary). A thermostat triggers heating or cooling when the room temperature exceeds a defined range of temperature, driving the room temperature back toward a given set point. Similarly, in the absence of sleep pathologies, when we are too sleepy, we are driven to fall asleep; and when we have recovered enough, we are driven to awaken.

    Sleep Drive. The need for sleep is a physiological drive, much like the drives for food and water. As with insufficient food and water intake, insufficient sleep leads to irritability and, if continued, to health problems. One may argue that sleep drive is even stronger than the drives to eat and drink. I may starve myself to death voluntarily or refuse to drink and then die of dehydration. However, continued sleep deprivation eventually causes each of us to fall asleep, initiating automatic recovery.

    [N]o one gets used to not getting enough sleep. They might be able to do it, but they never overcome the drive for sleep or the consequences that invariably follow sleep restriction. (22). Sleep debt has been compared to borrowing from a bank (100). People who sleep less than 8 hours per 24 hours are taking little 'loans' from their sleep banker. Morgan cautioned that You know that your dangerously moody sleep banker may call in the loan when you are driving at 79 miles per hour on the freeway. You should deposit eight hours in your sleep bank every day. In fact, the National Sleep Foundation has integrated the results of decades of sleep research and observed that the normal range of sleep need for adults (about ages 25 to 70 years) is seven to nine hours per night.

    Sleep Inertia. Sleep inertia occurs normally in the morning after awakening. It is a grogginess that usually lasts only about five minutes but may last up to 15 or 30 minutes in a person with a large, previous sleep debt. Though sleep inertia may not be detected as a problem after napping (Driskell & Mullen, 2005), it is possible that if the deeper stages of sleep occur during a nap, then this same sleep inertia may occur. Thus, at least 15 to 30 minutes should be allowed after a nap to allow sleep inertia to dissipate before performing safety-sensitive jobs.

    EFFECTS OF INADEQUATE SLEEP

    Humans have specific physiological and psychological requirements for getting adequate sleep. Everyone knows how it feels to get too little sleep. Sleepiness may be defined as an untimely desire to sleep and/or difficulty staying awake when wakefulness is required. Mental fatigue includes many symptoms, such as malaise, impairment of mood, memory impairment, slowed response time and impaired vigilance. Both sleepiness and mental fatigue are caused primarily by lack of sleep. When we do not get adequate sleep, we experience excessive mental fatigue during the time we are awake, also called excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). EDS often affects our ability to perform our jobs safely. Repeated sleep loss of even one or two hours per night will eventually degrade alertness and mental performance significantly, with greater effects for greater amounts of sleep debt. The effects of one night of sleep deprivation, for example not sleeping for 40 continuous hours, can still be detected in performance levels after five nights of sleeping for six hours per night (59).

    We measure both mood and mental performance during laboratory and field investigations of the effects of fatigue (76,87). Generally, fatigue-induced impairments of mood and of mental performance do not occur exactly in parallel. For example, after a night of sleep deprivation we may experience mood elevation when the sun comes up, but our mental performance may still be insidiously impaired. Conversely, we may be convinced, again insidiously, that our mental performance is adequate even though we are feeling the malaise of fatigue. This latter situation leads to single-vehicle, run-off-the-road traffic accidents in which the driver falls asleep at the wheel. This latter situation also underscores the need to create fatigue-reduction strategies when we are well-rested, not when we are already fatigued. Fatigued people tend to make stupid decisions.

    Shift Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD). SWSD is described in Code 307.45-1 in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD) of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) as a circadian sleep disorder. The essential features of SWSD are symptoms of insomnia or excessive sleepiness that occur as transient phenomena in relation to work schedules.

    If we lose sleep across successive nights, the multiple deficits cause an accumulation of sleep debt and cumulative fatigue. Frequently, we tend to gain some recovery sleep over our weekends or non-work days. However, recuperation from cumulative sleep debt requires getting more sleep per night than the individual typically needs and for at least several nights (6,59,124).

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1