Motivation
Jonsson Workwear International (JW International)
is a major workwear clothing manufacturer
that supplies customers in southern Africa,
the USA and Europe. The head office and
distribution centre in Durban runs a very
large and complex system that controls activities
in seven manufacturing plants: one in KwaZulu-Natal
and six in the Kingdom of Lesotho.
These facilities produce over 15 000 garments
each day and a stock level of over 350 000
garments is required to ensure constant
availability for orders that are picked,
packed and delivered to customers' premises.
Pierre Kriek, operational manager of the
Lesotho factories explains, "Jonsson's
rapid expansion from two to five factories
in three years was causing us problems.
We needed to monitor our staff working hours
much more closely. Rising staff numbers
(currently at 1500) added to the scale of
the problem.
"We had a tag system in place but found
there was a lot of fraud taking place. The
cost of the cards and intensive administration
effort were also an issue."
JW International already had a complex Impro
network installed. All factories are wireless
linked to the main administrative factory
and each factory has an internal wireless
network. All factories are also linked to
JW International's Durban head office.
Dani Tabak, systems developer at Timewatch,
comments, "We were familiar with the
network as it was installed by us three
years ago. One of our partners, Control
Concepts, handles support for Clockwatch
remotely via the Internet."
Rewards
JW International head office took the decision
to implement a full-scale
Time and Attendance
solution to resolve these issues. It also
wanted to establish a more complete access
control solution to better control access
to specific areas for different types of personnel.
Proposals were called for from a variety of
companies. Three companies submitted quotes
and Timewatch was awarded the contract to
implement the new solution. Timewatch assisted
with the design of the system.
Kriek comments, "Fraud prevention was
our main criteria. The system is a combination
of T&A and access control but we wanted
the new solution to improve security as well."
Implementation
JW International decided to adopt Sagem fingerprint
biometrics as the foundation of the new system.
32 Sagem readers were installed. A mix of
MA100s and MA300s were used.
"Clockwatch decided to keep the Impro
system to control the turnstiles. The time
readers were also left on the turnstiles where
MA100s were used, to allow the staff to see
the time. These readers were also used during
the phasing in of the fingerprint-based system.
Unused card readers were then used to improve
access control on office doors," explains
Tabak.
There were some initial challenges, according
to Kriek, in: "Enrolling everybody's
fingerprints and getting all the people familiar
with the turnstiles' operation. They all had
to get through quickly so that they were registered
for the full shift hours."
Tabak adds, "As JW International still
used the Impro tag system for AC, the time
readers were left in place so that the staff
could see the time. This also allowed us to
use these readers until all fingerprints had
been enrolled so we changed to fingerprint
biometric
time clock system gradually.
As staff were enrolled on the new fingerprint
time clock solution, their
access control cards were disabled."
Additional access control doors were added
at the offices for improved security.
Challenges
Tabak adds: "Because of the rapid rise
in staff numbers, it was a slow process getting
everybody enrolled and there were initial
difficulties assigning each staff member to
the correct factory. Staff also needed time
to adjust to the new and unfamiliar idea of
using their fingerprint to clock in for their
shifts, but after some time they got used
to the idea so a sustainable operational speed
has now been achieved."
Some customisation was required to integrate
the data from the fingerprint readers into
the Impro IXP400 controller that passes the
data into the ClockWatch T&A software.
CASE
STUDIES
