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Nampak updates time and attendance

The Nampak Group has selected a Kronos automated time and attendance solution implemented by Bytes Systems Integration (SI) as its group standard. To date, Nampak Tissue, Divfood Paarl, Rigids Cluster and Nampak Corrugated plants have implemented Kronos resulting in standardisation across the divisions as well as trends analysis by plant, department, shift and employees.

Nampak is Africa’s largest and most diversified packaging manufacturer and also has operations in several countries in Europe. In South Africa, Nampak offers a wide range of packaging products, providing customers with a total solution to cater for all their packaging needs.

Themba Mtombeni, project manager at Nampak, says before installing Kronos, the group had over 12 different time and attendance systems from multiple vendors.

“Most of the technology systems were outdated or in a state of disrepair. Continuous system failures led the group to revert back to manual capturing of time and attendance data, which resulted in inherent data inaccuracy and an additional administrative burden at site level and at the group’s payroll department,” he says.

Business and technology goals

With the sheer size of its operations across the plants, Nampak required a centralised and standardised time and attendance system. It also required a system to manage specific pay rules and configuration of different categories for pay rules, such as fixed term temps, shift leaders, apprentices, to name a few.

Additionally, Nampak required a system that could provide detailed and accurate reports on absenteeism amongst employees as well as control over buddy punching, where employees clock in for each other.

Nampak established a project steering committee consisting of representatives from group IT, HR, finance and production managers from Nampak Divisions and gathered the business and technical requirements from group IT.

Nampak invited 14 vendors for a full day of presentations to project steering committee and other key stakeholders and short-listed four vendors as a result of presentations. Each short-listed vendor visited the Nampak pilot site at Nampak Petpak Isando and Nampak visited vendor customer sites for live demos of respective systems, such as Nestlé and British Airways.

According to Dave Hunter, divisional managing director, at Bytes SI, Nampak then selected two systems and the project steering committee initiated an in-depth comparison of the functionality versus the pricing of the systems. This involved a three-year total cost of ownership costing of the system across 23 sites, servicing approximately 2000 employees and 185 managers who will log onto the system at any given time.

The solution

“The project steering committee recommended Kronos because as a time and attendance system, it was richer in functionality with work force management capabilities. Nampak also had the possibility of linking the time and attendance system to the enterprise resource planning system, which would allow for improved cost and management accounting,” he says.

Hunter says that by using one system, the cost of changes and new functionality would be minimised and would be easier to support. A single system also results in reduced hardware in the data centre and from a backup and disaster recovery perspective would decrease downtime, if it ever occurs.

The dynamic interface dashboard functionality of Kronos made it the preferred solution for Nampak. The interface allows for visual pattern tracking and monitoring of employee and absence patterns, temporary employee attendance management, as well as record management with audit capabilities in line with governance practices.

“With the Kronos interface, the correct pay, leave and allowance data goes directly to the payroll, without any admin interventions Kronos will dramatically lower Nampak’s costs. The labour management component was a major decider for them as well as the benefit of having shift changes and overtime schedules done directly on the system,” says Hunter.

Benefits

* Standardisation of time and attendance system, as well as standardisation of plant specific pay rules, configuration of different categories for pay rules such as fixed term temps, shift leaders, apprentices etc.

* Accurate attendance and overtime management reports. The absenteeism reports are reliable and provide trends analysis by plant, department, shift and employee, ensuring the consistency of managing absenteeism.

“The next phase would be an employee self-service system, where they can have access to reports and schedules for their respective shifts. Nampak needs to continually improve and upgrade its technology where possible, and the nature of the working partnership that we have with Bytes SI, is a good reference site for them based on the scope and successful implementation of the project,” concludes Mtombeni.

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