Magazine Article | July 25, 2006

Integrate Time And Attendance With Inventory Management

Source: Field Technologies Magazine
Integrated Solutions, August 2006

A ball-bearing manufacturer, with a product range including needle roller bearings, linear solutions, actuation systems, and engine components, needed to deliver shop floor control for many of its locations. It needed a time and attendance solution as well as a method to match work done on the floor beyond only matching bill of materials in the company’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. For example, rings and rollers produced need to be matched by size, material type, and lot.

The ball-bearing company needed a solution that communicated in real time over wireless networks. It deployed a solution composed of software applications from systems integrator Acumen as well as terminals from Accu-Time Systems (ATS). The solution provides inventory control, including physical inventory, picking and put-away actions, status check, and  item lookup, to name a few. The shop floor management functions include clocking in and out, starting and closing jobs and operations, inputting machine status, and management overrides. The software components of the solution are as follows:

  • GetDATA, which captures and validates terminal transactions.
  • LaborVIEW, which is the labor/time and attendance administrative module. The company can establish business rules regarding labor management, and the Web-based version, eLaborVIEW, can be used to produce labor reports.
  • JobVIEW, which is the manufacturing order administrative module. Shop floor standards are maintained here, and orders can be reviewed and entered. Parts and operations can also be viewed and edited, and the component has a Web-based module.
  • InVIEW, the inventory control module, administers inventory locations, times, recorder levels, and reporting.
  • PutDATA, which is the ERP integration module, used to integrate the workforce management system with the ball-bearing company’s SAP system.

The terminals are strategically located at manufacturing points throughout the shop floor. Employees clock in and out on the terminals to start and end their workdays. The employees use specific keys (e.g. ‘lunch start/stop’ and ‘break start/stop’) to identify other stops in work. To input work performed on the floor, the employees use ‘operation/setup/rework/teardown’ start and stop keys, associating the work done with the shop order.