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Getting to the meat of access control

Enterprise Foods turned to biometrics to improve its access control and employee management.

Enterprise Foods, manufacturer and distributor of meat products, has factories in various parts of South Africa. The Enterprise Foods factory situated in Polokwane recently went through a security overhaul to improve its productivity and to improve the working environment for its employees.

As with many businesses of this scale, controlling who accesses your factory and when can be quite a challenge. In the past, Enterprise Foods used to employ the services of a clock and card system, but quickly realised that this system was futile to say the least.

“Our attempts at controlling which employees could access the premises and which could not proved absolutely pointless,” an Enterprise Foods spokesperson says. “There were so many ways our employees were getting around actually coming to work. Buddy clocking, (when a friend clocks in for another friend) was one such way.”

Clearly Enterprise Foods had a problem on their hands and they had to do something about it fast. After some deliberation, it was decided that a fingerprint reader would be the only way to control entry to the premises and this was the solution put into action.

Benefits for all

In terms of what Enterprise Foods would get out of this system once installed, the list was endless. According to the company, each and every department would benefit from the new fingerprint system. HR would easily be able to monitor time and attendance, security would have tighter control on who is in the factory and who is not and the business would benefit overall in that it would have less shrinkage.

Enterprise Foods decided on using Morpho Access fingerprint scanners and Turnstar turnstiles – these were provided and installed by CI Polokwane.

Once approval was gained from all the necessary departments, Enterprise Foods tapped CI Polokwane for the job. No other companies were called to consult on the project as CI Polokwane had been addressing Enterprise Foods’ security and access needs for the past few years.

After the installation of the Morpho fingerprint scanners and Turnstar turnstiles, Enterprise Foods was able to see the benefits immediately. Time and attendance was far more accurate and the employees could no longer come and go as they pleased. Furthermore, security was improved tenfold, creating a safer and happier work environment for everyone involved.

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