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T&A sorted

Project scope

Staff 1500; 500 visitors and delivery people; 34 Sagem fingerprint readers; Take-on station: one reader; Sagem integration program: CWExport; Access control system: Impro IXP400; T&A software: Kronos; Integration manager program: VIM

The history

Patensie Sitrus Beperk packages and exports citrus. Farmers deliver fruit to the company by tractors and trucks to then be washed, sorted and packed.

There were problems with lost, forgotten, stolen and broken proximity cards which caused bad clockings, making proof of identification very difficult. 'Buddy-clocking' cost the company salaries and wages paid but not earned. Free access by non-employees had to be controlled. The replacement and upgrade resulted in there being more effective cost control.

The solution

The existing Improx system was retained as the access control backbone, and all card readers were replaced by Sagem fingerprint readers linked into the Improx terminals. At the same time the company upgraded the T&A to a Kronos system and installed the VIM integration manager.

The hope was that buddy-clocking would be a thing of the past, and also that employees' movements between sites could be tracked. Effective cost control was a major objective. There would be cost savings and improved access control of unauthorised personnel. Turn-around times of farmers' tractors, for the benefit of the farmer, could be monitored. Interface programs should cut manpower hours compared to data manually entered in each program.

The result

Stricter access control. Stricter workstation control. Cost control. Fewer bad clockings. Due to sequence clocking members are forced to back track when blocked at access and time points. Bad clockings are a thing of the past. What is now done differently is that the IT department was involved and still plays a major role with the HR department in the maintenance of hardware and software.

Fact file

Control Instruments Eastern Cape, Ian Gibbs, 041 453 1811

Sagem reader integration: Timewatch Systems, Dani Taback, 011 640 1850.

VIM integration, Cleararrow Consulting, Paul Wenborn, 083 400 9990.

Patensie Sitrus Beperk, Stewart Scott, 042 283 0303, stewarts@gamnet.co.za

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