Virdi AC4000 readers eliminate issues with dusty environment for Cape Concrete.
Cape Concrete’s core business is the manufacture of completed concrete structures such as stormwater pipes and prefabricated garages. Due to the nature of the manufacturing process and the materials of construction, the environment is extremely dusty. Added to that, employee’s fingerprints are often degraded due to the fact that concrete dries out fingers and is corrosive, resulting in inferior fingerprint templates.
The company found that, irrespective of whether they used fingerprint or hand geometry biometrics, their time and attendance system was prone to errors and misreading.
In 2009 Cape Concrete decided to address the prevalent issues with its three existing systems. The mechanical system was slow and cumbersome and was open to various forms of abuse, including buddy clocking. A fingerprint recognition system from another vendor failed to register many of the employees and had to be continuously repaired. Finally, the performance of the hand geometry system was continuously impaired by the extremely dusty conditions.
Cape Concrete approached Trac-Tech to assist them with a suitable solution which would overcome the continuous failures of the existing hardware. Virdi products had been successfully implemented on other similar sites so confidence was high that they would succeed at this particular plant. After consultation with Virdi Distribution, two AC4000 readers were selected.
The client specification called for a stable biometric clocking solution that that can be consistently used by all staff regardless of the state of their fingerprints and which needed little or no maintenance.
Within two weeks of the initial meeting with Virdi Distribution, the two Virdi AC4000 readers were installed and linked to the Timeregister time and attendance system, which conveys data to a payroll package. Template management software was installed with a take-on reader to centrally manage the employee’s fingerprints.
At a later stage, a Virdi AC5000 IP65 rated reader was added to these two readers as Cape Concrete was regarded as a good test site for the product due to its extreme environmental conditions.
Cape Concrete’s human resources staff was trained in template enrolment and management and a dry run was undertaken with selected staff in order to observe the effectiveness of the readers in this environment. There was a 0% failure rate and the system was then permanently implemented.
After implementation, weekly contact with the client allowed Trac-Tech to identify and alleviate any failures. There were no outright failures and tweaking comprised less than a handful of re-enrolments, something that is expected with any new system.
Situated in a steel cage erected next to the cloakrooms, the Virditech AC4000 readers were installed in tandem with the existing hand geometry readers to allow employees to transact on either system. However, within a month of the installation of the Virdi readers, the employees decided to exclusively use the new solution.
Virdi Distribution’s Chris Grauls said that companies should never underestimate the impact of the surrounding working environment when choosing a time and attendance biometric reader. “There are many good products on the market, but in an environment that is characterised by high densities of dust, a Class A reader is the only viable solution. The AC4000 reader contains the Union Community’s proprietary fingerprint recognition algorithm and a high-capacity 32-bit CPU which authenticates dry or wet fingerprints fast and accurately.”
Since the implementation of the AC4000 readers there have been no system failures and all employees are transacting successfully.
For further information contact 086 118 4734 or visit www.virditech.co.za
Fact file
Sector: Management information systems
Scale of project: Professional
Key elements: Virdi AC4000 and AC5000 readers Timeregister software
Benefits: Secure time and attendance, payroll integration
Solution supplier: Virdi biometric readers; Chris Grauls, 086 118 4734, Virditech
Hardware & software & installation: Virdi Biometric readers; Timeregister software, Ian Kellerman, Trac-Tech, +27 (0)21 4044600
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