No matter your business, someone will be coming in to turn the lights on. That preparation time has to be added to the workload through one of the workload types. Some manufacturing processes, especially in the food industry, need to stagger shift start times so that the first employee to walk in will turn on the lines and let them heat up for production before everyone else walks in to actually work on these lines.
These times are important to add to the workload. They represent the preparation of a work area so that it is ready to receive an employee and have that employee productive.
The same applies to closing times. The equipment needs to be cleaned, the lines need to be turned off in a certain order, etc. This is also time that is necessary to add to the workload.
In some cases, the employee doing the work is the one preparing his environment. In our grocery store, the cashier is the person that will open the register and count the cash at the end once they close it. It is not necessarily related to the open/close times of the store since a register can close in the middle of the day. In these cases, depending on the time required for these tasks, the workload needs to be changed so that every time one less cashier is required for example, 15 minutes area added at the end of that curve. So if 3 registers are required until 8pm and then only 2 are required, the workload needs to reflect that 3 registers are required until 8:15pm.
Note: the open/close times for the workload are not the same as setup time for the employees. For example, if the employees need to change before being allowed in the production area and you give them 5 minutes to do so, this 5 minutes is not required for the workload to be started. It is required for the employee to be ready to work and should be added to the employee’s shift as such, but not to the workload. This time is not part of producing work or getting a machine ready. Chapter 4 will discuss setup times more in depth.