Re: Time and Attendance

This topic comes up occasionally in the BPCS-L list & I would not be
surprised if also in the MAPICS-L list (check the archives) because the need
is not just something that interfaces good with the computer hardware &
operating system your company has invested in, but also interfaces good with
the OTHER software packages that you have.  The following questions will help
identify whether you need a system that is easy to interface or if your
company corporate policy is islands of computing that only talk to each other
by spending a big fortune on consultants.

How much modification is needed so that this can be used to report labor to
your ERP?
Does this use consistent bar code system with your inventory control?
Will quality control also be interfacing with this system?
Will you need to track this data including which machines & removable parts
(e.g. molds) used for purposes of seeing which in most need of preventative
maintenance?
Would radio frequency hand held scanners be worth while?
Do you trust your lowest paid workers to get this right?
Do you reconcile hours reported on the work with hours reported on the time
cards?
Do your time clocks speak to HR & Payroll so that no rekeying of data is
needed?
Does your HR dept get the data they need from the whole package so that they
can see who is deserving of a pay increase?
What kind of hours are needed by your people to do the clerical entry of this
data now & how close to real time is the input & where do most of the errors
come from?
Do you have engineering drawings that need to be linked to ERP files on how
the product is manufactured?
Does your quoting need access to history of costs of making similar
components?
Do you ever ship the wrong stuff to the wrong customer or ship correctly but
bill incorrectly?
How long does it take before an error is discovered?
How much hassle is it to correct errors?
Is security a concern, such as preventing deliberate errors associated with
embezzlement, stealing inventory, being credited with performance deserving
of a raise if it was true?
Does the data, being automatically captured, need to be rapidly communicated
to vendors & customers, such as ASN & PO updates?
Do you get orders from customers via a variety of means (snail mail, fax,
internet) that is in a consistent format by individual customer such that
scanning their orders in, as opposed to rekeying, would mean significant time
savings?
In your experience, are most hardware downages related to a PC interruption &
if you were entering a batch of transactions from that PC are you able to
recover where you left off?

In other words do you need an integrated system or can it all be helter
skelter?
And is the budget sufficient to buy & implement the package all over again
when the PC operating system is upgraded, or is it on an OS like 400 for
which this is the exception to the rule?

One of the outfits that meshes well with BPCS (rtdcs.com) supplies a
questionairre for evaluating where there is heavy human clerical work that
perhaps is in need of automation or streamlining ... I used it for such an
evaluation & was surprised to find that of our over a million "inventory
transactions" a year, more than half of them were people changing the costs
of our materials ... legitimate transactions, just a surprise to me that the
volume was so great.  I got SOME of the above questions from there & some
from my own evaluation of whether such a system made sense for us, and also
working with some related systems that did not have this nuance included.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)