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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Shop Floor and Maintenance

Shift

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

/ʃɪft/nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, shift means: One of the fixed working periods into which a day is divided in a plant, such as 07:00–15:00, and also the group of people who work in that period.

In Turkish: vardiya

How it is used

Used every day in planning and handovers. People work the night shift or are on the morning shift; plants run two or three shifts. A shift handover is the short meeting or report passed to the next team.

Example sentences

  1. We run three eight-hour shifts, five days a week.

  2. The night shift reported a leak on the hydraulic unit during the shift handover.

Common collocations

  • night shift
  • shift handover
  • work three shifts
  • shift supervisor
  • on the morning shift
  • production scheduleA plan that shows which products will be made, in what quantity, on which line or machine and when, usually for the coming days or weeks.
  • capacityThe maximum amount a machine, line or plant can produce in a given time, for example 1,200 units per shift.
  • downtimeTime when a machine or line is not producing even though it is scheduled to, because of a breakdown, a changeover, missing material or another problem.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Shop Floor and Maintenance

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