Comparison · Shift log

Excel is not a shift log.
Not a bad tool — in the wrong place.

Most continuous-process plants don’t run their shift log on dedicated software, but on paper or a spreadsheet on a shared drive. For this job the OPEREX Shift Log module is the recommended tool: the same log, but one that stays accountable across shifts and keeps anything in it findable six months later.

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What Excel is genuinely good at

It calculates, models, analyses, builds reports. It’s free, everyone knows it, and it can be reshaped in five minutes. These are real strengths, and none of them is in question.

None of them, however, is about what a shift log must do: let several people, across several shifts, write into the same record accountably — and still find anything in it six months later. A spreadsheet was not designed for that.

Eleven questions along the record’s lifecycle

1Capture — does it get in, and is it provable

Who wrote it, when — and who changed it since?

Paper logHandwriting. Editable afterwards, the page can be torn out.

Shared ExcelThe cell is silently overwritten. The change leaves no trace; the system clock can be set.

OPEREXAppend-only. Server timestamp and author on every entry. A correction is not a deletion but a new entry referencing the original.

Two shifts working in it at once?

Paper logThere is one copy, one hand writes it.

Shared ExcelFile lock, “read-only”, then log_v3_FINAL_fixed.xlsx.

OPEREXConcurrent writing without conflict. A single, shared source of truth.

Did the handover actually happen?

Paper logA signature, if the other party is there.

Shared ExcelNothing enforces it.

OPEREXA dedicated handover section in the log; filling it in is a required field on manual close.

Can an open item be lost at the change?

Paper logYes, unless copied over by hand.

Shared ExcelYes, if it scrolls out of the visible rows.

OPEREXNo. The open maintenance item and task carries over — with its owner — to the next shift, and stays visible until closed.

Photo, reading, permit number on an entry?

Paper logA separate folder, a separate register.

Shared ExcelAn embedded image falls apart, the file bloats.

OPEREXAn attachment right on the entry, with searchable metadata.

2Retrieval — does anything come out, and at what effort

Will someone find it six months later?

Paper logA box in the office, leafing through.

Shared Excel24 files, Ctrl+F one by one. Last year’s template with different columns.

OPEREXFull-text search and filtering by equipment tag, event type, HSE severity, period.

How does this become a monthly report?

Paper logRetyped by hand.

Shared ExcelPivot, VLOOKUP, Power Query — or a macro. Whoever can’t, asks whoever can.

OPEREXBuilt-in filtering and aggregation, scheduled reports. No formula required.

What do you hand the auditor?

Paper logA photocopy.

Shared ExcelA screenshot and an explanation.

OPEREXA canonical PDF with unchanged content, plus a CSV/Excel export for your own analysis.

3Upkeep — who keeps it working tomorrow

Who maintains the log?

Paper logThere’s nothing to maintain — but nothing to develop either.

Shared ExcelA colleague who knows macros. It isn’t their job, nor is it accounted for that way.

OPEREXThe vendor. Updates, fixes and support are part of the service.

What happens when they leave?

Paper logNothing.

Shared ExcelThe file stays, the knowledge doesn’t. It works until the first error, then no one touches it.

OPEREXNothing. The system doesn’t hinge on a single person.

Multiple plants, multiple sites?

Paper logSeparate logs, separate habits.

Shared ExcelSeparate files, separate templates, aggregation by hand.

OPEREXBuilt-in site isolation, with a unified template.

Excel is free. Its upkeep is not.

Behind every Excel-based log stands a person who wrote the macro, set up the Power Automate flow, and has been fixing it ever since whenever it breaks. Not a software developer, and not their job.

There is no documentation, test, version control, ticket or support behind it. An in-house application built in a spreadsheet that nobody calls one.

The cost isn’t in the licence, but in their time — and in the risk that one day they resign. When that happens, the file remains — the knowledge does not.

Behind OPEREX is a maintained product, not a side project: the update, the fix and the new feature are part of the service — not something waiting on a colleague’s spare time.

It doesn’t take Excel away — it feeds it

Excel is an excellent analysis tool. A poor record. OPEREX separates these two roles: capture happens in the log, analysis can stay where it always was.

Every data point exports with one click to CSV or XLSX — your own reports, your own templates live on.

What OPEREX does not do

Not a historian. It doesn’t collect process data from the DCS.
Not a control system. It doesn’t intervene in the technology.
Not a design tool. It doesn’t replace engineering documentation.

It does one thing: it records what happened during the shift, so that it can later be found and proven.

A shift handover is not an administrative formality. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued dedicated guidance on it after incomplete or unstructured handover featured as a contributing factor in the causal chain of several serious industrial accidents. The core recommendation: a handover should be structured and recorded in writing — exactly what a free-text spreadsheet cannot enforce.

Shift log — digital handover in practice

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