Micklegate Engineering Ltd

Based in Bristol, Micklegate Engineering specialises in the supply, fitting and repairing of lorry-mounted equipment.


Customer Challenge
Although Micklegate only employs a relatively small number of staff, accurate employee time and attendance is vital to company efficiency.

Micklegate previously used to manually record the hours worked by employees using a pen and paper. These were then transferred into a spreadsheet and used to calculate the payroll.

Although the manual system had been used for a while, it was proving insufficient in dealing with modern workforce patterns, and couldn't be used for specific job costing. The manual system was also very slow and time consuming for the admin department to process.

The idea of a job costing system was also a significant reason why Micklegate considered automating their time and attendance system. Micklegate felt that they were not correctly recording actual hours
spent on jobs and that the labour costs needed better control.

The Business Solution
Auto Time Solutions installed Auto:time Premium Software together with Ingersoll-Rand biometric  terminals in late 2006. All employees scan their hands at the beginning and end of each working shift and this information is automatically placed on their record.

Because biometric terminals verify that the person clocking in is who they claim to be, each employee can be assured that their hours are accurately calculated whilst also gaining a greater insight into their
holiday entitlements.

Personal records have been created for each employee, making the payroll administration much easier and quicker to process.

Auto Time also implemented a job costing / shop floor data capture system. By using the job costing facility, Micklegate are able to see easily how their initial quotes match against actual costs. This helps to ensure accurate invoicing to their customers. Not only that but managers are also able to gain a greater insight into the specific roles being performed by employees in real time.

Likewise, being able to break a job down into operations allows management to see how long the component parts take individually, which in turn helps keep a track of costs.

As part of the installation Auto Time provided significant training to Micklegate's staff to use the both the time and attendance solutions and job costing facility.

Recommendation
Currently all employees use the solution for time and attendance purposes, although only the engineers use the job costing facility.

Cheryl Gentle from the Administration department at Micklegate says:
"The personnel at Auto Time Solutions from the sales team, to the installers, to the helpdesk are all very friendly and helpful."

"Training on the system was very thorough and spread over a period of time to allow admin staff to get used to the system and find out where they needed help. Since then any calls to the helpdesk have
been dealt with quickly and efficiently."

"As a "non-technical" computer user I find the use of remote assistance log-in extremely useful – usually ensuring any problem is solved within hours rather than days waiting for an engineer to come
to premises."

 

Read the full case study here (PDF)