Kronos® Enables Manufacturers to Reconcile Labor and Machine Utilization to Drive Operational Efficiency
Provides real-time visibility into how machine downtime affects labor productivity
2009-02-25
CHELMSFORD, Mass., Feb. 25, 2009 — Kronos® Incorporated today introduced new capabilities within the Workforce Central® suite, allowing manufacturers to collect and manage machine utilization data and related labor and material data together in one integrated solution.
Traditionally handled as distinct disciplines, the combined view of reconciled labor and machine utilization enables shop floor managers to identify and resolve bottlenecks in real time, resulting in higher levels of productivity. Unlike many existing ERP or MES systems, which collect and batch machine performance information and provide reporting on the results a week or two later, Kronos provides the status of machines, shop floor workers, and work-in-process (WIP) to shop floor managers in real time. In the event that a machine is down, the manager is immediately notified, and has the ability to shift labor to another position to keep the shop floor operating at peak efficiency.
"Achieving the next level of shop floor productivity improvement requires intelligence and insight on the combination of labor, WIP, and machines," said David Caruso, founder and principal at Caruso & Associates. "The ability to track in one application how these resources interact and impact overall productivity will be of interest to all operations leaders who care about continuous improvement processes, and by offering measurement on these in real time, Kronos is setting an industry standard in productivity improvement endeavors."
By linking workers and their activities to manufacturing operations, the new resource utilization capability reduces the complexity of managing the manufacturing workforce. Gregg Gordon, director of manufacturing marketing at Kronos, said, "Coupling the understanding of how people are utilized with the state of resources such as operating equipment, cells, or processes enables manufacturers to closely manage, in real time, both their people and the operations that they work on. Tracking machine downtime at the same level of granularity as labor is important for determining and meeting productivity goals and benchmarks."
The marriage of labor and equipment tracking ties Overall Labor Effectiveness™ (OLE) to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) key performance indicators together. OEE is used by many manufacturers to assess the performance of their machinery. OLE was introduced by Kronos in 2007 to provide a comparable metric for labor performance.
"To deliver the perfect order, manufacturers know that labor, WIP and machines must all work in harmony," said Mark Nguyen, IT Project Manager at Ceradyne, Inc., a worldwide leader in the development and production of advanced technical ceramics." And managing daily disruptions is a full time job for all manufacturers. By adding resource tracking to the existing capabilities of employee and WIP tracking, Kronos now provides comprehensive real time, reconciled information that warns about issues and enhances decision making to improve throughput, labor cost performance and on time delivery." Jerry Pellizzon, the company's CFO, added "Ceradyne is looking forward to taking advantage of the new enhancements, such as these, available in Kronos Workforce Central v6.1."
Efficient labor, WIP, and resource tracking closes major gap in ERP systems
The ability to easily track and manage daily production in real time is a gap that has existed in ERP systems for years. The challenge has been to achieve timely, 100 percent reconciliation of resource and labor hours against production results. Manufacturers have historically been forced to rely on a series of inefficient manual processes and spreadsheets to try and reconcile information from disparate systems. Kronos now automates these processes by first collecting and keeping track of all the required information and then by providing a configurable method of modeling daily production data and reconciling that information against resource and labor results. Supervisors now have a tool to increase productivity because they have real-time visibility to what is happening on the shop floor.
This new capability for manufacturers is available in Workforce Central 6.1 (see "Kronos Announces Availability of Workforce Central 6.1"). For more information regarding Kronos solutions call (800) 225-1561.
Note to journalists: A screenshot demonstrating the new manufacturing capabilities is available for download.
About Kronos Incorporated
Kronos is the global leader in workforce management solutions that enable organizations to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. Tens of thousands of organizations in 60 countries — including more than half of the Fortune 1000® — use Kronos time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, HR and payroll, hiring, and labor analytics applications. To learn how Kronos uniquely delivers complete automation and high-quality information in an easy-to-own solution, visit www.kronos.com.
© 2009 Kronos Incorporated. Kronos, Workforce Central, and the Kronos logo are registered trademarks and Overall Labor Effectiveness is a trademark of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.