Time for a much better view?

Although production workers accept clocking-on as a necessary evil, attempts to collect detailed information about work rates on the shop floor can cause suspicion. A reluctance to ‘rock the boat’ is probably one of the reasons that time and attendance (T&A) is not linked as often as it ought to be to production systems. The apparent fear of Big Brother belies a business truth: there’s little point in focusing massive effort on materials control unless you also know where your labour is being used and how much it is costing you, job-by-job. It has very little to do with making employees’ life tougher, but everything to do with using an expensive resource properly. Companies do it to stay profitable, which actually safeguards jobs rather than kills them. Today virtually every ERP system either offers T&A and shopfloor data capture (SFDC) modules of its own or can link to specialists like Kronos and Workplace Systems (go to www.mcsolutions.co.uk to create your won shortlist). Graham Larter of McGuffie Brunton, which provides the Equator HR system as an integrated part of its ERP, believes that attitudes are changing. “People are readier to do something about it because competitiveness has driven through a culture change. Firms need completely up to date WIP (work in progress) plus accurate costings on job versus estimates. And, by moving away from time sheets, they finally get a true picture of their efficiency rates.” Are you under-quoting? Once the link to production is forged, many companies are appalled to discover they have been seriously under-quoting man hours on jobs they have run repeatedly. One such is Thales Acoustics, which manufactures communications and audio ancillary equipment for military and commercial markets. The firm installed Kronos’ ShopTrac Pro, an SFDC/T&A system, for use by all production staff at its Harrow site. Previously, a swipe card T&A system logged operator hours and overtime. The system output data to a spreadsheet which, after manual correction, went to payroll. Meanwhile, operators filled in daily timesheets detailing the jobs they had worked on, downtime, etc. In Thales’ own words: “This information eventually filtered back to the cost office, where much time and effort was spent in laborious calculations to derive costing information – and it was impossible to guarantee that the timesheets would reconcile with the T&A bookings.” In fact, it wasn’t worth operating. Now, operators clock in and out using the same kit as before, but the advantages begin when booking on and off jobs. Scanner guns are used to read bar codes against each operation in the works order, so it’s much faster. After each operation, the terminal reminds the operator to enter the quantity before clocking to the next. Cell leaders can authorise overtime, book holidays, and correct mistakes via their PC terminal emulators. They can also monitor their unit’s performance. Although the system is still in its early stages, Thales anticipates several other advantages. It will be able to calculate efficiency figures for operators, departments, piece parts or entire work orders. Tracking of rejects will be possible by part number, operator, machine or category. There should also be an improvement in the costing of each assembly – and thus more accurate estimates. Beyond this, the availability of real-time information will alert managers to problems. Also, by interfacing with MRP, the system can give a clear picture of available labour for shop floor capacity loading. And it will simplify and speed up payroll, with absentee analysis, overtime calculations, and setting shift patterns. Further, if all goes as well as expected, there should be significant on-time delivery improvements as a result of the real time analysis of production, and works orders tracking throughout the system. It’s a good illustration of what can be achieved. The most remarkable factor, however, is how much you get for so little. Obviously, systems vary in scope and sophistication but, compared with many IT projects, T&A/SFDC is pain free. A firm with around 250 employees, starting from scratch, could get away with £20,000 and four to six months to get SFDC and T&A up and running smoothly. You could also expect good returns within the first year.