Time to attend to T&A

Time and attendance (T&A) systems don’t get the attention they deserve. They are simply seen as a modern substitute for clock cards: a good way of making sure your workforce is where it should be. But there’s more to it than that. Used intelligently, the information recorded through T&A can be used to enrich a whole range of business processes. In essence, it can help you understand and deploy your resources better in everything from skills utilisation to scheduling and actual job costing, serving a whole range of other job functions. Even at a straightforward level, T&A can produce quick wins for little expenditure. Last year, drugs manufacturer Pharmacia carried out a T&A project at its Morpeth site, replacing its home-grown system with one from Crown Computing. On a site where every employee clocks in, Pharmacia didn’t even need to replace the clocks. It simply interfaced security access data to T&A and thence to payroll. And then it gave every employee password-protected access over the company intranet to their own attendance, overtime and holiday records from ‘web kiosks’. We’re with you According to Pharmacia’s systems analyst Richard Henderson, it led directly to a performance improvement. “People have become self-policing because there is a new level of visibility in how they are working. It also gives them an easy way of checking that they are getting paid for the work they have done. They like it because everyone is being treated the same way.” Interestingly, shop floor managers – initially among the greatest sceptics – are now strong converts. They thought they would be swamped in dealing with exceptions and in electronically authorising overtime and absences. Instead, the benefits in timesavings and ease of use are tenfold. Since some production takes place in closed areas, the process helps give managers who are physically detached from the shop floor a clearer picture of daily labour utilisation. In fact, it’s quite well documented that in general when T&A is integrated with other company IT, the return is even greater. This is particularly true when it is linked to ERP via shop floor tracking (SFDC). Cambridgeshire-based SME firm RJ Herbert Engineering is gaining real business benefits from linking labour management to its planning and execution processes. The 120-strong company is a specialist manufacturer of automated systems for the fresh vegetable handling and packing industry. Late in the 90s, it installed an Impact ERP system from McGuffie Brunton which included its directly linked Equator HR module. According to Ken North, works manager, this level of integration means that key management data is now delivered across the organisation. And the company has certainly seen the expected benefits in easy payroll and reduced absenteeism. But what’s interesting is that the advantages go far beyond that. SFDC is used to automatically collect labour costs for each employee, job and project, which are reconciled against T&A – and the company is now saving 19 man hours per day. The data also gives real-time tracking of WIP (work in progress), build costs to date and WIP valuation. More, it provides a basis for the analysis of labour use and costs for improved bidding of future work. It has even helped to pinpoint areas, such as general assembly, where actual costs were far higher than was generally realised. The system has also helped highlight other hidden issues. For instance, with manual timesheets, rework was often unofficially booked against other jobs or general ‘yard work’. Not only did this distort the timing of jobs, but meant the company had no accurate idea of true cost. Now management can track it fully.