I've been told that Intel expects a rolling 12 hour shift. Something like 3 on, 4 off, 4 on, 3 off.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is better than 3 8-hour shifts. When the mills were running in Youngstown, they even had 3 swing shifts that were 4 hours off the main shifts so there was knowledgeable coverage 24/7.
12 hours in a day would be a killer. You'd be fighting your own mind at the end, and you'd basically have to go home, sleep, and do it again.
I remember some of our fab folks, operators and techs I think, were on a 3 on 4 off rotating schedule. Talk about disrupting family time. I was thankful I didn't have to deal with that kind of disruption. To provide technical coverage for all production shifts, engineers were on call 24/7 (uncompensated). I had a pager and/or a cellphone on me at all times. Fortunately I rarely experienced those emergency calls, maybe once a year and was able to resolve the problem on the phone without driving back to the plant. Still, it was very unnerving to hear the pager go off, followed by the cell phone and if that didn't wake me up, the house phone too.
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