Manufacturing facilities are well-known for maintaining a lean and mean operation. Every person from CEO-level administrators to floor-level plant managers are searching for ways to raise efficiencies, cut waste, and streamline operations. Commonly, much attention is focused on keeping productivity levels high on the plant floor, but this sometimes comes at the expense of administrative office functions being over looked or remaining stagnant.
 
Perhaps the leading time and money waster in office administration is the old way of processing of employee time and attendance records — specifically for bigger facilities whose employees can number in the hundreds, if not thousands.
 
While many companies have invested heavily in Enterprise Resource Planning regarding time and attendance recording, in many cases the data that drives these systems is curiously still handwritten out on paper and collected one by one. Accuracy depends on the employee’s handwriting being legible, and timesheets not being lost in transition.
 
Once the paper timesheets are collected and transported to accounting, someone will need to manually key the timesheets into other systems for processing. This generally will take a manager to sit at a desk for hours, reviewing time off, and entering totals. This process inevitably will cause human error—from employees clocking in more often than once to forgetting to clock out. This, essentially, leads to a large part of each payroll processing day being spent solving errors. And if a time and attendance issue does arise and remain unknown until it’s too late, correcting the issue may not even be possible.
 
Overall, it’s a time-consuming manual process that is neither efficient nor accurate and leaves virtually no chance of determining the actual costs to produce a product.
 
The Solution
 
Today’s cloud-based time and attendance technology enables managers to review and process information through web-based software applications. Besides offering flexibility and convenience, cloud-based technology enables significant time savings, greater efficiency, and information updates in real time and available 24/7.
 
With the cloud, the challenges mentioned above are removed and administrative functions come to be automated. Through the usage of new employee time clocks that use biometrics or employee proximity badges, employees can to clock-in and out from different locations while delivering employee time data into one central online database. Plant managers welcome this innovation seeing that it gives them the flexibility to track their employees’ time and attendance at their convenience from any Internet connection.
 
Some other benefits to cloud-based time and attendance technology include the ability to directly produce updated information — including seeing when an employee clocks in at the facility from any place in the world that has an Internet connection — and time records that easily integrate with major payroll software programs.
 
Let’s take a good look at some of the challenges that cloud-based employee tracking software addresses.
 
Time and Attendance — A fully automated solution that explains “who,” “what,” and “when” through better management, collection, and processing of employee time at the workplace. Eliminates complicated paper clocking systems that result in inaccurate time reports, administrative errors, and increased labor costs. The system also automatically updates so that the legal risk of non-compliance is got rid of. Proven to maximize efficiency, save time and money, and pay for itself in as little as a couple of months.
 
Time Allocation System — A Time Allocation System (TAS) monitors and records employee working time against specific jobs, projects or tasks by helping employees to login to the exact duty they’re performing. This is a separate function from the Time and Attendance solution described above. The TAS data allows managers and supervisors to see which employees and departments in an organization are most efficiently using their workday thereby ensuring projects stay on budget and that fair compensation is awarded to the worker.
 
Access Control System — The bigger the factory, the harder it is to be aware of if the right people are in the right places operating the right duties. An Access Control System allows managers and supervisors to regulate and record the movement of staff, sub-contractors, and visitors in real-time, at multiple entry points. It also synchronizes seamlessly with Time and Attendance and TAS.
 
Employee Self Service — An Employee Self Service system allows on-site and remote workers the flexibility to reach their schedules and request time-off online which their managers can quickly accept or deny. Giving employees control of their own time management allows HR and supervisors to pay attention to their various other administrative duties. Real-time data is caught in the cloud and can be automatically accessed by both employees and managers alike.
 
Clocking-In Options — Today’s manufacturing facility needs convenient timekeeping systems for today’s modern workforce. Various clocking-in suggestions include web-based where workers register on the database and manage their time via the web, a biometric time clock that records information at the touch of a finger on a biometric scanner; text alert clocking that allows employees to text message their attendance time to a virtual mobile phone number; landline clocking that is ideal for mobile and remote workforces and that uses a landline phone; mobile clocking that gives employees the ability to clock-in or -out  and onto tasks or projects on their mobile device; and a desktop biometric reader that provides the full functionality of a clocking terminal at a fraction of the cost.
 
To sum it up….
 
A state-of-the-art time and attendance system is now a need for every major industry, such as manufacturing, energy, retail, government, healthcare, and pharmaceutical.
 
These highly sophisticated and comprehensive solutions are straight forward to integrate and use and provide easily accessible management and reporting tools. They also appeal to today’s younger employees who are generally searching for the ability to work from another location and cope with their schedule.
 
This article is originally posted on tronserve.com