Running a small manufacturing shop in the United States is not for the faint of heart. We have seen so many proud “Made in America” operations die due to foreign competition and the recession that those unfamiliar with the industry might be surprised to learn that there are still some domestic manufacturers that have not only survived but are booming.
Today’s case study looks at a custom cabinet shop geared to the high-end residential market. During the 2007-2009 recession, the owner started adopting lean manufacturing practices, which he credits for helping his business weather the economic downturn.
Though lean manufacturing processes were initially established for large assembly-line manufacturing facilities, many of the fundamental principles can be applied to companies of any size or industry.
From 2008-2013, the owner concentrated on increasing the efficiency of production systems and materials management. Around 2013, he realized that lean manufacturing principles could increase the efficiency and profitability of his workforce. He knew that paper timesheets, an old school time clock, and archaic scheduling processes were cumbersome and inefficient.
His primary goals were:
- Eliminate redundancy through automation
- Reduce time devoted to non-billable processes
- Leverage data to continually increase profitability
- Improve document management
Solution — Workforce Management Suite
Workforce Management Suite consists of TimeWorksPlus and TimeWorksTouch for cabinet shop employee timekeeping, TimeSimplicity for scheduling, and TimeWorks Mobile for mobile functionality. Let’s look at how Workforce Management Suite capably fulfilled each of his primary objectives.
Eliminate Redundancy
Before Workforce Management Suite, each worker would fill out a time card, then a supervisor would approve it, then the hours were manually entered into the payroll system by one of the HR staff. Three different people touched each time card each payroll period! TimeWorksTouch permits employees to clock in at the shop or on their smartphone when picking up materials, out on a bid, or at a job site. Time card data is captured automatically and can then be accessed in a variety of different formats. Managers can approve them at a glance in the cloud-based system or set the system to auto approve. The data is then imported directly into payroll.
Minimize Time Devoted to Non-billable Processes
Prior to implementation, Workforce Management took most of the HR team’s time and a significant amount of time for supervisors and employees as well. Now that employees manage their own electronic timesheets and hours are imported directly into the payroll system, the HR team has time to help with sales and billing. And the owner has determined that even if the business triples in size, he won’t need to hire more HR staff.
Before Workforce Management Suite, the managers had been using Excel spreadsheets to develop employee schedules. TimeSimplicity has customizable templates and drag-and-drop functions that allow managers to create team schedules in minutes.
Leverage Data to Boost Profitability
TimeSimplicity enables the owner and management team to analyze and adjust worker schedules to improve employee productivity. Overtime alerts and schedule enforcement have lowered labor costs and boosted the bottom line.
Improve Document Management
Manually capturing, storing, and accessing HR data was unbelievably inefficient before the implementation of Workforce Management Suite. Employee time and attendance, schedules, time cards, PTO tracking, payroll processing, and compliance reporting ate more than twenty hours a week for the two-person HR team. Now, there are no more error-prone paper time cards to enter into the payroll platform, no tedious accruals tracking, and audit-ready records protect against any DOL action.
What can Workforce Management Suite do for your business? Call today for a demo.
UPGRADE TODAY
SwipeClock offers Workforce Management Suite, the powerful, fully-integrated Workforce Management Suite that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your supervisors, employees, and organization.
Workforce Management Suite includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. Workforce Management Suite is developed for busy employers like you who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and lessen labor costs.
How much can you save? Check our SwipeClock ROI Calculator.
We can get you up and running with Workforce Management Suite in minutes. Contact us today to set up a demo.
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