In a constantly changing production environment like food processing, using paper or spreadsheets to schedule shifts is not only time consuming, but incredibly prone to human error. Plant supervisors won’t be alerted of any conflicts until 10 minutes before the shift is due to start–or even after the fact when a violation has occurred–and employees won’t be notified of any schedule changes until they arrive at work.
It’s no wonder that one plant in Kalamazoo was struggling under the weight of tackling a dynamic task with a static solution.
The Problem
With more than 70 full-time employees, Welch’s Lawton plant is responsible for all of Welch’s sparkling juice production in the United States. Production demands are complex and change each week, and their scheduler was left dealing with the volatility.
The plant also faced bottlenecks that only added to employee frustration:
- Lack of scheduling transparency
- Inability to conduct audits to settle grievances
- Scattered vacation and overtime requests
Paper processes played a part in each problem. Read the case study to learn how.
Welch’s needed a system that automated schedule generation based on demand—while also adhering to complex facility requirements and union rules. They weren’t getting that with paper, so they implemented Workloud.
The Indeavor Solution
A shocking 99% of the employees now interact with their schedules using the mobile app or their computers. This is a huge change in sentiment and engagement; with almost every other online system the plant was using, they rarely saw even 50% user adoption.
That’s probably because employees can and want to participate in the scheduling process.
Interested in how your food processing facility can improve employee engagement while scheduling a headache of the past? Learn more or request a demo here.
Workloud is our workforce management SaaS solution which offers clients an end-to-end, cloud-based employee scheduling, time & attendance, and absence management system. Workloud integrates with your human capital management and enterprise resource planning systems to create a robust platform that provides you with real-time employee data.
