6 Time Trackers to Boost Productivity in a Manufacturing Company
With the fourth industrial revolution in progress, a high-tech approach to production management is no less than a norm. Many manufacturing businesses have already optimized their performance and increased output quality through smart control systems and automation. But organizational improvements should not stop on production process digitalization. For better outcomes, it’s vital to adopt a high-tech approach to team management too.
A good time tracking system is in handy in this regard. It makes resource management and progress monitoring more effective. By streamlining administrative activities, it can help your company save money and time while fostering deeper productivity analysis and suggesting ways to positive change. If it looks like something your manufacturing business might need, be sure to check the below list of the best time tracking solutions and find a perfect match for yourself.
Timesheet Software
1. actiTIME
Key features:
- Mobile and offline time tracking
- Financial performance reports
- Time off management
- Automated invoicing
actiTIME is one of the most cost-effective and simple-to-use timekeeping tools of today. Along with manual-entry timesheets, it has a mobile app with an automatic timer and an option to track hours offline, which is particularly convenient for production employees who don’t have access to computers throughout the workday. In combination with simple functionality for time off and overtime management, automatic hour tracking will help you maintain exceptional payroll accuracy and develop an error-free picture of team productivity.
In addition to that, actiTIME is of great help in analyzing project costs and resource allocation. Its robust reporting functionality provides insightful data on your business’s financial performance and the use of time by employees. You can apply this information to support your management decisions, make it more evidence-based and stimulate work improvements.
To streamline your business workflows and boost efficiency even more, actiTIME can also be synced with a plethora of apps for project management and accounting. Learn about the most popular actiTIME integrations from this post.
2. Standard Time
Key features:
- Project planning
- Barcode time tracking
- Expense tracking
- Flexible reports
This software has everything to benefit your manufacturing business at both the organization-wide and the individual level. Using time tracking data submitted to Standard Time, managers can see which types of work consume resources most and identify which employees delay progress. These data will support deeper performance analysis and assist in making better management choices.
As for individual employees, by tracking time in Standard Time, they will get more control over their wage calculation process. Plus, they will appreciate an easy way to request time off right from their timesheets.
For even higher convenience, Standard Time allows for access through mobile devices and supports data input through barcode scanning. These features foster higher time tracking accuracy and a more efficient, interruption-free workflow on the shop floor.
3. ClickTime
Key features:
- Resource planning
- Budgeting
- Time off management
- Performance reports
Straightforward online timesheets are ClickTime’s primary functionality. But regardless of its simplicity, this piece of software can help you solve multiple problems at once.
For instance, if you need to create a realistic budget for your next manufacturing project, you can run one of many ClickTime reports to review your previous project costs and, afterward, employ these data for work estimation. You can also analyze your current project profitability and see how it’s related to individual team members. And then, you may optimize resource allocation by using the resource planning dashboard that displays the info on your budgets, billing rates, employees’ working hours and more.
Overall, ClickTime is an excellent option for data-driven decision-making. It will help you stay in the know of your ongoing work progress and attain all the long-term project goals with greater ease.
Time Clock Software
1. Workforce
Key features:
- Scheduling
- Workforce analytics
- Real-time wage tracker
- Compliance with labor laws
Unlike the above mentioned apps on our list, Workforce doesn’t let you track hours against specific tasks. However, if you want to be certain your employees come to work on schedule and do their job for the right amount of time daily, this software is perfect for you.
Workforce is more than just a plain clock-in and clock-out app. It combines a simple-to-use scheduling functionality with in-depth workforce analytics and a real-time wage tracker. Applying these features, you will be able to efficiently track labor costs, keep an eye on business productivity and make evidence-based team management decisions.
Workforce allows managers to review and approve employee timesheets in a matter of seconds and then seamlessly export them to external payroll systems. Besides, it fosters impeccable compliance with regulatory obligations. This way, it reduces legal risks and allows your employees to focus on manufacturing problems instead of engaging in a time-consuming payroll process.
2. ShopVue
Key features:
- Attendance management
- Production traceability
- Labor tracking
- Analytics
ShopVue is fully packed manufacturing execution software that fosters impeccable operation monitoring and allows for collecting real-time data from the shop floor. It helps to keep tabs on every side of the production process, including machinery performance and order processing. More importantly, it enables managers to gather and review employee attendance data in a streamlined, paperless way.
With ShopVue, your employees will merely have to punch in and out from work or implement a wireless device to report the start and the end of particular jobs. The system will faultlessly record the submitted data and present it to you in neat-looking reports. Thanks to these easy-to-use time tracking features, you will always know what your team members are doing and how productive they are.
3. Replicon
Key features:
- Online timesheets
- Absence management
- Scheduling
- Payroll integrations
As an intelligent workforce management system, Replicon has plenty of features to help you track employees’ time and control their attendance more effectively. Besides simple online timesheets, this piece of software includes time clock functionality with facial recognition and photo capturing — the best remedies against time theft and buddy punching.
All the data on teams’ working time is available to managers in the form of comprehensive reports, which you can also utilize to analyze job costs, make labor forecasts and manage payroll.
The main benefits of Replicon for employees are its simplicity of use and self-service options. For instance, they may submit time entries to the system through a mobile time tracking app, review important shift information on the schedule dashboard and send leave requests to managers in just a few clicks. In other words, Replicon is sure to be valuable for all stakeholders in your manufacturing business.
