Labour & job tracking | Time and attendance

Overview

Many businesses still operate with traditional punch-card timeclocks and manual, paper-based processes for tracking time and attendance and labour hours spent on production jobs. A typical process involves many steps and much duplication of effort:

1. Employees hand-write their daily time cards, including job codes and time spent on each job.
2. After the timecards have been completed and collected at the end of the workday, the supervisors have to review the cards for accuracy.
3. After review, the timecard data is entered into a spreadsheet and has to be reconciled with the clock card totals; discrepancies have to be referred back to the supervisors for resolution.
4. After review and reconciliation with the timecards, the spreadsheet data is re-entered into (a) the payroll system, and (b) the scheduling system to update the production schedules
5. The data from step 3 is analyzed into various cost categories, converted into dollars and then entered into the accounting system.

The combined effect is an inefficient, error-prone and costly process. This is without taking into account the impact of delayed reports and the effect of inaccuracies in the data. If there is more than one location or some employees work off-site, the situation becomes even more difficult to manage. In some companies, the process is so time-consuming that the data can only be compiled weekly.

Automated time and attendance and data collection systems can eliminate the duplication of effort, speed up the overall process dramatically, reduce or even completely eliminate the paper-work, and significantly reduce error rates. They can also greatly simplify the data collection effort required on the shop floor. There are excellent systems available that can deliver a return on investment in a matter of months.

BW&A can recommend systems that will fit your particular needs and budget, including Time and attendance systems that incorporate:

Swipe or proximity cards systems / Biometric hand-punch clocks
      - swipe/proximity cards eliminate the need for traditional          timecards
      - biometric (hand or fingerprint recognition) systems go one step          further – they do not require cards, and they eliminate “buddy          punching”

Automated attendance reporting
      - supervisors/managers can see who is in, and who is absent,          directly at their PC or from system generated automated
         e-mails
      - some systems can report attendance in real-time

Hand-held data entry units / PDAs or cell phone data links for off-site   employees
      - no need for hours to be called in or faxed from off-site locations
      - some systems allow web entry for submitting hours information

Integration with your payroll system
      - eliminates time required to re-key data into the payroll system
      - avoids errors from re-entry

Some systems have additional features such as accrual tracking for vacations and benefits, which can be important for companies with larger numbers of employees. In addition, some systems provide labour management and HR modules.

Labour & job tracking systems record labour hours by job/project and other shop floor information utilizing more sophisticated data collection equipment than is needed for basic time and attendance tracking, including:

Touch screen monitors, touch screen computers, or hand-held    terminals
      - eliminate paper records and improve data accuracy
      - data validation ensures that employees can only enter       -         approved job/project codes
      - touch screen systems can provide shop floor access to CAD         drawings and notification of engineering changes; some         systems provide for two-way communication
      - data collected can include job status, materials usage and         scrap, quality checks and rework information
      - data can be made available in real time

Bar code readers for job data collection
      - a good alternative to data collection terminals for some         companies
      - may be integrated with the use of terminals in some situations

Data collected from the shop floor can be run as an independent system, or integrated with time and attendance, production scheduling, ERP/MRP and other systems to create a single database for all shop floor production data. Compared to manual systems, the data is much more accurate and received faster (in some cases in real-time), providing production management with greater control and the ability to react much more quickly to any situations that require corrective action.

The overall effect of automating data collection is to provide management with real visibility into shop floor activities that a manual system simply cannot provide, and this can have a dramatic impact on production efficiency. Contact BW&A for more information on how improved data collection systems can benefit your company.   

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