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Ineos

Ineos Continuing Compliance with INEOS Manufacturing Scotland Limited

INEOS is a leading global manufacturer of refined oil products and basic, intermediate and speciality chemicals.

The INEOS production network spans 70 manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Africa. The combined INEOS Group of companies has more than 15,000 employees making it one of the largest independent chemicals company in the world, the largest in the UK, as well as the UK's largest private company.

Grangemouth is INEOS’ largest site and home to Scotland’s only crude oil refinery. The refinery is operated by INEOS Refining, one of the largest independent refiners in the EU. The Grangemouth refinery supplies a range of fuels including ultra low sulphur diesel and petrol to the markets of Scotland and northern England.

The site operates 24 hours a day, 365 days per annum with a core continental shift pattern for five teams which includes rostered holidays, with additional floating holidays available in summer, for employees covering maintenance work. The site has been operating this form of Annualised Hours working for a considerable period of time and it is well accepted on site by some 600 shiftworkers. The site employs a similar number of dayworkers, on a wide variety of full time, part time and flexible hours patterns, with differing contractual entitlements for breaks, start times and finish times.

In looking to improve on their systems, INEOS Manufacturing Scotland Ltd (IMSL) reviewed their methods of managing and monitoring shiftworking, in particular additional hours or overtime working and its impact on Working Time Regulations compliance within the businesses. Situations where additional hours are worked at site typically occur during planned maintenance shutdowns. These shutdowns have working time implications for both the 600 shiftworkers and the 600 dayworkers, when extended day shifts or increased night work occur.

Prior to the involvement of Working Time Solutions, monitoring was carried out by the site’s Working Hours Review Committee, utilising a number of methods to record and administrate working time, mostly spreadsheet-based. Shift leaders, from varying departments collated their own team data in different ways, feeding this directly into the on-site payroll system. However the level of detail required under new working time directives was difficult to extract.

Given this, IMSL set itself the challenge, over a short time-frame, to secure a supplier, configure and install a system and go-live across the site. The company selected Working Time Solutions Ltd, to implement their WORK Suite™ Management module, a software application that would provide a more comprehensive database for the day-to-day planning, management and monitoring of working time on the Grangemouth site.

Over a period of 6 weeks the software was configured to IMSL requirements, working with employee representatives and HR to ensure that terminology mirrored existing systems and training on the system could be more easily delivered. Methods of transferring the existing data from on-site systems into WORK Suite™ Management were established, which enabled six months worth of historic data to be recorded in the database, prior to the new system going live.

There was a strong working partnership between WTS and IMSL, with configuration including:

• 1200 employees, on 65 schedules, across 26 departments
• 100 users, including management, shift supervision and HR
• Bespoke exceptions to report both reasons for and payment of lieu or overtime
• Bespoke reporting for Working Time Regulations
• Creation of a report to highlight employees who may be at risk from breaching Average Hours worked
• Bespoke training and documentation
• Varying levels of access to restrict data viewed/actioned by different groups of users

An intense training period ensured that all 100 users were in a position to utilise the system in time for the 1st July 2008 ‘go-live’ date. This training was enhanced with IMSL specific training material created, both as an overall manual of the module and a more specific user guide, which referred to specific variance types and the reasons when/why they would be used.

The new system has delivered a change in culture for the site. Previously the guideline of 160 hours additionally worked over 3 months was the trigger for potential working time breaches. Once WORK Suite™ Management was in place, it became apparent that this guideline no longer met the requirement to manage time. Employees could, in theory, work in excess of 160 hours, however, due to rostered holidays, for the vast majority of employees working overtime, the average weekly hours fell below the 48 hour average for the relevant regulation. This new system enables IMSL to be in a position to monitor more accurately working time.

High levels of resourcing from both IMSL and WTS, with good communication opportunities throughout the development, configuration and installation processes ensured that the project was successful, with supervisors able to log variances and report on working time regulation checks for the July 1st 2008 deadline.

Users of the system have provided positive and valuable feedback in relation to the ease of use of the software, with more date-specific, accurate recording of absence and overtime allowing for a more transparent view of working time across the site and across businesses.

To find out more about the many services available from Working Time Solutions – including consultancy, software and Lean-ER itself – then please don’t hesitate to contact us or submit an information request and we shall be happy to find out how we can help. All our solutions start with talking and listening: we look forward to beginning the conversation soon.