Retail solutions manufacturer Dresser Wayne is using biometric HandReaders to track time and attendance for 400 hourly employees at its facility in Austin, TX, resulting in annual payroll savings of $20,000.
HandReaders from Recognition Systems, the biometric component of Ingersoll-Rand''s (IR) Security Technologies, automatically take a 3-dimensional reading of the size and shape of a hand and verify the user''s identity in less than one second. Biometric readers eliminate the need for an employee to carry a badge, which can be lost or forgotten. Biometric time clocks also eliminate "buddy punching," the practice of employees clocking in and out for each other, and provide more accurate information about who is working and when, helping a company eliminate intentional or unintentional mistakes. In addition, not having hourly employees fill in their time each pay period results in visible cost savings.
"It is a very secure system that provides accurate information about who has worked, and for how long," said Chris Walter, manufacturing systems engineer. "It doesn''t sound like much when you look at it from one person''s time savings. But give back 10-15 minutes per employee to the manufacturing process every 2-week period -- and reduce the time the team captains have to review the numbers from an hour to 30 minutes -- and we achieve an annual savings of a little more than $20,000."
Manufacturing costs are directly affected by employee productivity. With its 400 workers spread across four buildings at the Austin facility, Walter needed a more efficient method of collecting time and attendance records and readying the information for payroll.
Before installing the biometric solution, hourly employees completed paper timesheets, signing in and out each day. At the end of the pay period, employees had to complete paperwork and give it to their team leaders for verification prior to entering it into the payroll system. This process took about 15 minutes per worker.
In early 2000, Dresser Wayne started searching for a solution to eliminate the manual process. Legiant, an Austin, TX-based company specializing in development of web-based time and attendance tracking solutions, introduced Wayne to its biometric solution.
"Biometric time clocks are very accurate," said Walter. "We tried to spoof the system with someone else''s hand similar in size to mine but the system would not accept it. It is a very secure system that provides accurate information about who has worked and for how long."
The Legiant Timecard system easily implemented Dresser Wayne''s rules for labor collection, allowing the company to allocate 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon for breaks that could be charged directly to overhead. This enables the company to track its labor efficiencies accurately and develop efficiency reports for accounting. Another benefit is that the HandReader biometric clocks work over the company''s Ethernet network, eliminating the expense of having to install new wire.
The system can also compare the amount of labor used to manufacture a product against the forecasted costs to make certain the numbers balance. This information helps the company plan its hiring, track overtime usage, and determine the output per person in each area.
HandReaders handle any population volume with ease; with low false reject and failure to enroll rates, their value grows as the number of users and/or transactions increases. They are recommended for outdoor applications.