Over 1000 tonnes of steel and 320 tonnes of aluminium are needed every year to deliver a craftsmanship in air, fire and smoke control products that is unconditionally endorsed worldwide.
No small player in the market, Ruskin Air Management is the acknowledged UK market leader in air distribution and fire and smoke control. With three authoritative brand names and 520 years’ combined sales experience, our customers draw huge benefits from a unique interchange of information and investment in shared technology and resources.
Requirements
Employing over two hundred staff at two locations in the UK, Ruskin’s main requirement was a simple to use attendance recording system that would ultimately enable hours worked information to be exported directly to the company payroll, SAGE line 50;.
Effective absence monitoring and the tracking of holidays was also listed as a prerequisite along with a flexible reporting module with the potential for bespoke reports. The ability to export the captured data to Excel was a point highlighted as a possible future requirement.
The attendance terminals were required to incorporate barcode readers rather than more conventional magstripe or proximity readers. This would ultimately mean that staff could use their attendance ID badge on both the timeware and the existing MRP data collection system.
Finally, with two sites in the UK, an effective strategy was required that would enable the combining of information from both locations, whilst enabling managers at either site to access & maintain the attendance and absence information for their own staff.
Solution
timeware was able to demonstrate that the various work patterns in use at Ruskins could be handled automatically by the system and that should changes to those work patterns be required, they could be implemented with a minimum amount of user intervention.
Staff holidays are now recorded in timeware rather than spreadsheets. One advantage of this is that managers can avoid potential ‘holiday clashes’ between key staff and also identify which staff are failing to take their allocated time off. Too many people planning to take their holidays at the end of the year can cause problems for a business and timeware solves this by identifying potential problem staff at the six and nine month points in the holiday year.
Connecting both company locations was a joint effort between timeware and the Ruskin IT team.
The timeware server was installed at Whitstable with Bridgnorth staff accessing the system using remote desktop connection.
Comment
'The implementation of the attendance solution was relatively painless! A project manager from timeware was assigned to oversee the installation and provided an easily accessible point of contact for any questions that we had about the project, the training or the day to day running of the system.
Connecting both sites was an initial worry but the remote desktop connection has proved extremely reliable and the security and permission features built into timeware ensure that people can only access preauthorised information.
The integration to SAGE line 50 was the final part of the project and this was completed very easily and has proved invaluable in reducing the preparation time of the monthly payroll.
A final point worth noting relates to one of the benefits of the timeware global assist support agreement: each year timeware visits our site to upgrade the system and to retrain staff on new features. This is a great facility which ensures the system is always up to date!’
Colin Codling
Commercial Manager
http://www.ruskinuk.co.uk/
5 August 2013Darren Philips