Management speak! But what it means is that there was one team performing one process on a number of different shifts or work areas, meaning that one team looked after the process as a whole, rather than having someone from each shift working or reporting independently. Therefore, where shift teams might be aligned vertically, with a manager above a supervisor above a worker, the team in discussion worked across all of these vertical arrangements, producing a horizontal team structure working across all the shifts.

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Note added at 41 mins (2011-06-24 17:07:38 GMT)
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I'd keep the "aligned" because it expresses the idea of the team being all at the same level across the vertical teams ...

So that the working hours of at least some members of this special team will always coincide with those of the rest of the workforce.