The DuPont shift schedule explained: the 12-hour, 28-day rotation with examples

The DuPont schedule is a 28 day rotation of 12 hour shifts: 4 nights, 3 off, 3 days, 1 off, 3 nights, 3 off, 4 days, then 7 days off in a row. That comes to 14 shifts and 14 days off per cycle, and every crew works both days and nights. The week off at the end is why people ask for this schedule. The middle of the cycle is why people warn you about it.

We make Lumical, an app that scans work rosters into your calendar, so read this with that in mind. Everything below is calendar math you can check on our free shift pattern visualizer.

What is a DuPont schedule?

The pattern is named after the DuPont chemical company, where it originated, and it stuck wherever the plant cannot stop. Fourteen 12 hour shifts per 28 days is 168 hours per cycle, which averages 42 hours a week. No single week actually contains 42. One stretch holds 72 hours and another holds zero, and that swing is the whole character of the schedule.

Four crews run it together, staggered seven days apart. On any given day one crew is on days, one is on nights, and two are off. Four crews averaging 42 hours each is 168 hours a week, which is exactly what one position needs for around the clock coverage. That staffing math is why DuPont survives: it keeps a 24/7 operation covered without a permanent night crew.

A 12 hour DuPont schedule example, block by block

Here is one full cycle from your seat:

Then it repeats from the top. Day 29 is the first of four fresh night shifts.

A worked month: October 2026

Cycle days are hard to picture. Real dates are not. This is one crew’s October, assuming cycle day 1, the first of the four nights, falls on Thursday 1 October 2026. Twenty eight days is exactly four weeks, so the whole cycle fits inside the month and the last three days open the next one.

The seven day break is 22 to 28 October. The single off day is Sunday 11 October, wedged between the day block and the night block. One weekend in the month is fully free, 24 and 25 October, and it sits inside the long break. Start your cycle on a different date and the shape is identical while the dates slide.

The full four-crew rotation

One crew’s calendar only tells you half of it. DuPont needs four crews running the same cycle a week apart. Crew A sits on cycle day 1 below. Crew B is seven days further along, crew C fourteen, crew D twenty-one.

Read any row across and you get the same four cells in some order: one crew on days, one on nights, two off. That holds for all 28 rows, which is the whole trick of the stagger. Each crew ends the cycle with 7 day shifts, 7 night shifts and 14 days off, so the night work is split evenly and nobody carries it permanently.

The rows also show where your relief comes from. When crew A walks into its week off on day 22, crew C picks up the days and crew B the nights.

The famous 7 day break

Every 28 days you get seven days off in a row without touching your leave, about thirteen times a year. It sits right after the four day shift block, so you walk into it off a normal evening finish instead of crawling out of a night block. For most people this break is the whole argument for DuPont: long enough to travel, or to fully reset your sleep.

The catch is the re-entry. The first thing waiting on the other side is four consecutive nights.

The brutal parts

The middle of the cycle is where DuPont earns its reputation.

The single off day. Day 11 is one day off wedged between three day shifts and three night shifts. It is the only buffer you get for the flip from days to nights: you finish your last day shift on the evening of day 10 and report for nights on the evening of day 12.

The 72 hour stretch. Days 8 to 14 hold six shifts. That is 72 hours of work inside seven days, all balanced on that one off day.

Recovery days. The first off day after a night block starts with you getting home at dawn and sleeping through the morning. DuPont has two night blocks per cycle, so two of your 14 off days work like that. Call it about 26 a year.

None of this is hidden. It is all visible in the tables above. The cycle just reads gentler on paper than it lives.

Who runs the DuPont work schedule

Continuous process industries, mostly: chemical plants, refineries, power stations, paper mills. Control rooms and dispatch centers that stay staffed around the clock use it too. It suits places where four crews own a position permanently and management wants night work shared rather than assigned to one fixed night crew.

That sharing is the real fork in the road. A rotation like Pitman keeps each crew on a single shift type forever, so nobody flips, but somebody is a permanent night worker. DuPont spreads the nights across everyone and pays for it with the transitions above. We compared the two in detail in Pitman vs DuPont, and the 2-2-3 vs DuPont comparison page puts the cycle, the hours and the weekend counts in one table.

Your weekends are fixed all year

Because 28 days divides evenly into weeks, the DuPont cycle locks to the same weekdays permanently. Wherever your crew’s rotation sits against the calendar, it stays there. Depending on that alignment, your year holds roughly 26, 13, or 0 full weekends off, and the number never changes. Nights make the count stingier than the off blocks suggest: both 3 day off blocks begin the morning after a night block, and a Friday night ends Saturday morning, which spoils that weekend. The Friday night rule covers the spillover in detail.

To see your own crew’s exact number instead of the range, the DuPont calendar for 2026 draws the full year for every alignment and counts the weekends. The 2027 calendar and the 2028 calendar are ready for when your roster rolls over.

Getting 28 days into your calendar

A clean DuPont template can be charted once and trusted, and if your plant never deviates, a printed year planner does the job. The lived version is messier: swaps, overtime, training days, and a grid photographed off the break room wall. The two day-to-night flips per cycle also make hand typing risky, because every night shift spans two calendar days and is easy to enter on the wrong one. Lumical reads the photo, understands the rotation, and files each shift on the correct days, overnights included. You review everything before it saves. The walkthrough is in how to get a photo of a schedule into Apple Calendar.

If you are still deciding between rotations, rotating shift schedule examples puts DuPont next to five other patterns on the same four weeks.

Starting a DuPont rotation, or weighing an offer that includes one? Get Lumical on the App Store and put the whole cycle in your calendar from one photo.