Accurate time and attendance recording for plant shutdowns.
Steinmüller Engineering is an engineering services provider that has operated in southern Africa for over 45 years developing, implementing, optimising and maintaining industrial plants using state-of-the-art technologies.
The company’s core business is the maintenance of power stations. The main issues faced before implementing any type of time and attendance solution was planning resources for power plant shut down, maintenance periods and clocking hours and overtime. The company’s previous time and attendance solution was obsolete and totally inaccurate. Employees were using friends to clock each other in which made the time attendance register completely inaccurate.
The new system, based on biometrics, does not allow employees to clock for each other as they have to be physically present in order to register for work. Furthermore, with the installation of portable biometrics, the system was that much easier to use.
According to the company, the main reason for the implementation of the new biometrics system was to gain better control over time and attendance and the hours worked, for a more efficient payroll system.
Before the project commenced, Steinmüller put the solution out on tender. Stanley Security Solutions SA was appointed to control the entire project from design to implementation.
Convincing management was only one hurdle Steinmüller faced before the installation could commence. Lack of bandwidth and bad networks made the implementation a challenge. Stanley managed to overcome this by supplying a stable solution.
Steinmüller decided on Morpho biometric readers, fixed and portable readers for gathering information. BESAccess software was also installed to interface clocking data to Navision ERP software.
To measure the project progress, the company decided to set up weekly status meetings. These meetings were attended by Steinmüller, Stanley and Wishlist. Any problems or issues that needed addressing were sorted out in these weekly meetings. When asked what advice the company could give to others in their position, a company spokesperson said: “When it comes to enterprise solutions, make sure you speak to specialists like Stanley and Wishlist.”
Steinmüller Engineering’s HR and IT departments are set to benefit the most from the new installation. “The manual solutions previously employed led to numerous misunderstandings and as such dozens of unnecessary meetings were held, wasting everyone’s time,” a company spokesperson said.
Once the solution was up and running, Steinmüller was pleased with the results. According to a company spokesperson, the company is now able to successfully and accurately record time and attendance and could now plan properly for proposed power plant shutdowns and completely eradicate the buddy clock-in system.
Fact file
Sector: Maintenance power generation/manufacturing
Scale of project: Enterprise
Key elements: Morpho biometric readers
Benefits: Planning and time & attendance
Supplier and installer: Morpho biometrics – BESA access; Navision interface and the planning software, Kobus le Roux, +27 (0)11 844 3273, Neville Levinthal, +27 (0)11 806 3219, Stanley Security Solutions Wishlist.
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