Shifts represent combinations of work and rest time which, when executed in order, represent the availability of a resource or process over a given period of time.
Shifts for Resources (Roles)
A shift is used to describe the availability of Roles. You can specify a shift as a single period, or as a group of other single-period shifts. For example, you can create single-period shifts called Morning Shift, Lunch Shift, Afternoon Shift, and Overnight Hours, and then create one group shift for the day that comprises all the single-period shifts. It should total 24 hours. If every day is not the same – for example people do not work on Saturdays and Sundays – you might want to create a group shift for every day of the week, and then group those shifts into one shift representing the entire week.
Shifts have already been created in the encyclopedia we are working in. We will examine them in this topic of the tutorial.
In our example, most of the staff work a four-hour shift in the morning, have a one-hour lunch break and a four-hour shift in the afternoon. The workday ends at 6pm and resumes at 9am the next morning. On weekends, the office is closed.
To take all of this into account, the following single-period shifts have been created:
•9am – 1pm + Lunch,
•2pm – 6pm, and
•6pm – 9am.
The above shifts have been grouped into a shift called 9 to 5 Working Day. Furthermore, four other, similar ‘working day’ group shifts have been created to account for the whole working week (Monday through Friday). In addition, a single-period, 48-hour shift called Weekend has been created.
Finally, the five group threads (one for each working day) and the one Weekend thread have been grouped into one overall group shift that is called 9 to 5 Working Week.
Examine a single-period shift
Let us begin by reviewing a single-period shift called 9am – 1pm + Lunch, by performing the following steps:
1 Within System Architect’s Explorer, open the Definitions branch and find the Shift definition type.
2 Click the + mark next to Shift to display all the shifts already defined in the encyclopedia. Open the shift definition 9am – 1pm + Lunch (double-click it, or right-click it, and then select Open).
3 In this shift definition, observe that there are three tabs – Introduction, Single Period, and Access Data.
4 On the Introduction tab, observe that the type of shift is set to Single Period.
5 Select the Single Period tab, and observe that this shift specifies a Working Duration of 4 Hours, a Rest Duration of 1 Hour, and an Overtime Duration of 0 Hour.
6 You can optionally open the following Shift definitions, and review their specifications:
Shift
Working Duration
Rest Duration
Overtime Duration
2pm – 6pm
4 hours
0 hour
0 hour
6pm – 9am
0 hour
15 hours
0 hour
Weekend
0 hour
48 hours
0 hour
Note The total hours of the shifts 9am – 1pm + Lunch (4+1 = 5 hours), 2pm – 6pm (4+0 = 4 hours), and 6pm – 9am (0+15 = 15 hours) is 24 hours. The Weekend is 48 hours.
Reviewing a group shift for a working day
Let us now review a group shift, named 9 to 5 Working Day, that is a collection of the single-period workday shifts above (excluding Weekend).
1 Within System Architect’s Explorer, open the 9 to 5 Working Day shift definition.
2 In this shift definition, observe that there are three tabs – Introduction, Sub Shifts, and Access Data.
3 Go to the Sub Shifts tab. This group shift is constituted by the following SubShifts:
•9am – 1pm + Lunch
•2pm – 6pm
•6pm – 9am
Note If you are creating a group shift for the first time, you will not see the Sub Shifts tab at first – you will only see the Single Period tab. You need to select the Sub Shifts toggle choice on the Introduction tab, and then press the Apply button at the bottom of the Shift Definition dialog, in order for the properties in the dialog to change – enabling you to see the Sub Shift tab and enter appropriate information.
Examining a group shift for a working week
We have just examined a group shift for a 9 to 5 Working Day. For our example, we also have a group shift for a working week. A working week contains five 9 to 5 Working Day shifts, and adds the Weekend, single-period (48 hour) shift.
1 Within System Architect’s Explorer, open the 9 to 5 Working Way shift definition.
2 In this shift definition, observe that there are three tabs – Introduction, Sub Shifts, and Access Data.
3 Go to the Sub Shifts tab. This group shift is constituted by the following SubShifts:
The 9 to 5 Working Days in the list above were added by simply dragging the one 9 to 5 Working Day definition into the list box five times. Each time it was added, System Architect automatically added a -# to the end of the name to make it unique. The only disadvantage to having done this is that there is no correspondence between a particular 9 to 5 Working Day definition and a day of the week – for example, Monday or Tuesday. We simply have five working days, named 9 to 5 Working Day through 9 to 5 Working Day‑4 (as compared to 9 to 5 Working Day-1 through -5, or Monday through Friday). The information is the same; what you name these shifts is arbitrary.
Note When adding a definition with the same name into a profile, System Architect will mark the definition with a -# because duplicate names are not allowed.
