Elliott Reduces Cost and Increases Efficiency with its Kronos® Solution
Download Printable Version
Elliott Company is a capital goods manufacturer serving oil, plastics, petrochemical, and refining companies. Headquartered in Jeannette, Pa., Elliott has been producing turbines, rotating machinery, air and gas compressors, and power generation equipment for nearly 100 years. Elliott distinguishes itself by building products that are engineered to order and specific to each customer’s needs. A subsidiary of Ebara Corp., Elliott has nearly 2,000 employees and 18 sales and service centers located around the world including Canada, China, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, Bahrain, and Japan.
Elliott Company looked to replace its 20-year-old legacy time and attendance system in 2004. The previous system tracked attendance, vacation, and overtime all on separate, manually-recorded spreadsheets. The system did not provide historical data of employee time and attendance, nor did it provide any tangible, real-time data for tracking productivity on employees or projects in process. Elliott had installed an ERP system from Oracle that tracked time, attendance, and labor data for salaried employees, but it did not provide the detail needed to track hourly employee time and attendance information or real-time shop floor project data.
Workforce Central solution saves time, cost, and helps manage compliance
Elliott Company decided to implement the Kronos Workforce Central® suite in 2004 to help improve its ability to track and manage attendance, overtime, and vacation while remaining compliant with complex labor laws and union pay policies. With an obsolete, manually driven time and attendance system previously in place, Elliott faced a number of obstacles tracking complex union pay rules, vacation, overtime, and other leave policies. The previous system provided no measurable cost savings either. With Workforce Timekeeper™ in place, Elliott now has the ability to track various pay rules and rates while remaining compliant with elaborate pay provisions from unions such as the United Steelworkers. "Having a number of different pay rules and codes is not an issue. They were entered on our solution during implementation, and we now track these rules easily," Elliott Senior Business Analyst John Russo says. Managers now have the ability to view employee time and attendance information instantly in a similar way to which they monitor project status information. Unexcused absences, late arrivals; and early punch-outs are all monitored automatically. Managers also have access to historical attendance information to view trends in absence and employee productivity. "We had no historical data at all with our previous system. Now with our Kronos solution, we have information dating back four years for all our hourly employees," Russo says. "This is a huge benefit for us."
Workforce Timekeeper's ability to interface with Elliott’s payroll system through Workforce Connect™ allows employee time and attendance information to be transmitted weekly through an automatic feed.
Elliott turns to Kronos Workforce Central to help drive shop floor performance
As a manufacturer of complex products that requires a specialized, highly skilled workforce, Elliott faced a number of challenges in a demand-driven market. Their main desire was to obtain visibility into the actual shop floor and analyze data that could result in making better decisions about the effectiveness and efficiency in the manufacturing process. They could integrate this information into their ERP system for the shop floor managers to use. This functionality, combined with an improved, automated time and attendance solution, would be a huge step forward in obtaining return on investment and providing value to their customers.
With a solution consisting of Workforce Timekeeper, Workforce Activities™, and Workforce Connect, Elliott now has the ability to track employee time, attendance, and productivity, as well as project time, cost, and utilization data. In addition, the implementation of Elliott’s Kronos solution was completed under a tight deadline, with all pay rules in place, and users trained within four months.
Kronos solution provides real-time labor and project cost information
Before implementing its Kronos solution, under the original ERP system, Elliott performed its labor and project cost calculations manually, with data that was unattainable on a daily basis. Now that Workforce Timekeeper and Workforce Activities interface with their ERP system from Oracle every 15 minutes, supervisors can now view real-time data on jobs, operations, work centers, labor hour standards, and labor expended. "The ability to obtain project cost and status every 15 minutes is a great feature," Russo says. "The Kronos solution interacts with our ERP system seamlessly." With its Kronos solution, Elliott can track up to 1,500 active work orders at any given time. This allows Elliott to answer incoming calls from customers regarding the status of their orders. Supervisors can view the project WIP through the Kronos Workforce Genie® functionality and immediately answer these questions. Because of this feature, a single Elliott employee who supervises the repair of small parts for the turbines has been able to provide the status on any small part affecting the completion of these projects. The information also produces accurate billing and project time completion figures. Elliott was also able to reduce the time spent producing monthly financial closing cost figures from two weeks to two days.
This information benefits the morale of employees and supervisors as well. With these periodic updates, employees become more aware of how they are spending their work hours, thereby increasing productivity. Reports showing information on the status of a project show managers the remaining hours needed to complete a project. With extensive information at their fingertips, managers can determine the correct task for each employee, and if additional training is needed. As a result, managers have more time to pursue strategic ventures instead of manually tracking shop floor activities. Perhaps the most important benefit Elliott has achieved from its Kronos solution is the ability to optimize direct labor resources through waste reductions, as identified by their Kronos applications, an essential component of the labor production process.
Kronos solution creates value for Elliott
With the implementation of its Kronos solution, Elliott has been able to create a Lean Six Sigma initiative of determining waste and non-value-added activity. This allows Elliott to save time, and cost and increase productivity within its workforce and with its manufacturing equipment. The results are a more efficient manufacturing process, increased product quality, and higher satisfaction among customers and employees. Elliott plans to continue creating value by upgrading to Kronos Workforce Central 6, the latest, most powerful workforce management solution available. In an industry where demand is critical, Elliott can adapt to a constantly changing market with the help of its Kronos solution.
©2009, Kronos Incorporated. Kronos and the Kronos logo, Workforce Central, and Workforce Genie are registered trademarks and Workforce Timekeeper, Workforce Activities, Workforce Connect, and “Experts at Improving the Performance of People and Business” are trademarks of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change. All rights reserved.