Bharat Forge Improves Productivity and Reduces Costs with Kronos® Workforce Central®
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Bharat Forge Limited (BFL), the flagship company of the USD 2.4 billion Kalyani Group, is a leading global supplier of forged and machined products. With manufacturing and engineering facilities in 12 locations – four in India, three in Germany, one each in USA, Sweden, Scotland and two in China, BFL has the capability to meet the global demands of its customers with seamless engineering and design support. BFL manufactures a wide range of safety and critical components for the automotive, railways, energy, construction equipment, oil & gas and several other industrial sectors.
The company has a 10,000 strong, highly skilled, global base of engineers and technicians at its various manufacturing locations. BFL's global forging capacity of over 700,000 Tons per annum, is one of the largest in the world, and the company is now at the threshold of achieving global leadership.
Managing this diversified workforce and ensuring accurate payroll calculation with a manual system and an outdated automated system was no easy task. Kronos Workforce Central Suite had helped Bharat Forge cut down the time taken for payroll processing extensively and has ensured accurate process and therefore increased productivity.
Bharat Forge decided to go in for a comprehensive workforce management solution and chose Kronos. By tying up with Kronos, BFL wanted a completely automated solution that would help them cut down on the extensive time taken for payroll processing.
The integrated suite proved to be a wise choice to eliminate manual processing and ensure that payroll administrators completed their payroll processing tasks more efficiently than ever.
Automating Complex Processes, Outdated Systems
BFL had numerous pay practices which varied by time of work, time worked, departments worked, number of days worked and a diverse employee population with full time, casual, contract, trainees etc., Also activities like application of leave, application of overtime duty, short leave, shift change etc., required manual forms which had to be submitted to HR for eventual reconciliation.
The outdated manual system created ongoing inefficiencies. Numerous attendance policies made things difficult for the payroll staff. There was no real-time and consistent reporting. Reporting took a lot of time and managers could not have information about their employees' exceptions. There was the constant risk of missing the payroll deadline. All of these lead to the possibility of error in calculations.
The existing system was not adequate for a facility that had undergone a tremendous growth. BFL needed to implement a new solution quickly, to tackle all these problems. After looking at many vendors BFL found that Kronos was the only vendor to meet and exceed the criteria.
Modernization with Workforce Central Suite leads to new efficiencies
Bharat Forge finally found what they exactly needed in Kronos. Implementing Kronos Workforce Central® suite, with its powerful Workforce Timekeeper™ application, allowed Bharat Forge to successfully address the challenges and more.
With this comprehensive time and attendance solution in place, the company eliminated 6000+ manual leave cards, removed outdated time clocks, deployed self-service to every employee in BFL through the use of Kronos 4500 time terminals, empowered managers to view and approve online employee timecards, leave cards, OD cards, Short Leave request and hence significantly reduced the number of manual payroll entries and checks, and increased employee satisfaction.
Empowered employees and managers enjoy new access
The ability to see their employees' time, leave, on premise reports and other information in real time was a big success with the managers. They were relieved of the burden of manual timesheets and record keeping and enjoyed capabilities that were not previously possible.
With Kronos, they could access reports online and get instant access to number real-time on-premise reports, exception reports like absenteeism data, late in, early out data, overtime reports etc.
They do not have to depend on HR to send them the reports they need on their manpower. This not only lead to improved decision making by the managers as they got the data in real time but also saved HR from the hassle of generating numerous reports and do more value added work.
Organisations in India also needed to adhere to the factories act and Kronos helped Bharat Forge take care of their legal compliances related to employee time.
Employee satisfaction increased with self-service
Every major change in processes takes some getting used to. For Bharat Forge, getting all employees to utilise the new system was easier because acceptance went from the top down. Every single person used Kronos to enter time.
Employees are happier as well as they need not walk to the time office to know the leave balance, apply leave, know attendance status etc. All these functionalities are available at the production bay on the self service kiosks (terminals) which also collect their attendance. Apart from empowering employees this also eliminated the productivity loss due to employees visiting the time office. The whole exercise of manual leave cards collection at the end of the month, reconciling them and keying it into payroll is also eliminated completely.
Mr. Zope adds "With Kronos' innovative kiosk based time capture terminal we deployed self-service to every employee including workmen thus empowering employees and eliminating payroll errors arising out of manual reconciliation. We've been able to give our managers the ability to better manage their employees' time with a single point of access to critical information in real time. Kronos has had a measurable impact and we expect to reap further benefits in future".
The way forward
The time-to-pay automation has already been achieved in Bharat Forge with the help of Kronos solutions. This automation also includes automation of leave management, absence management and associated workflows. Bharat Forge intends to go for the Kronos Workforce Activities solution in the near future which will help them measure their employees' Overall Labour Effectiveness (OLE™). This solution will help Bharat Forge pinpoint causes of delay in production, downtime, Overtime etc., and eliminate waste from the manufacturing process thus improving productivity and profitability.
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