With the announcement of Workforce Central version 6.1 at its annual user conference in October, human resources software specialist Kronos has quietly staked out a broader footprint in the manufacturing world.
Kronos executives told customers attending the Orlando, FL, conference that version 6.1 contained more than 1,000 enhancements, such as the ability to track not only human resources on the shop floor, but also the machines that those workers operate.
At the heart of this capability is the new Performance Monitor feature, said Gregg Gordon, Kronos’ global practice leader for manufacturing, in an interview. Through the monitoring tool, which is part of the Activities module within Workforce Central, shop floor managers can view in one place the status of machines, shop floor workers, and work in process — all in real time. Performance Monitor, for example, may show that a machine is down and allow the line manager to shift labor to another work cell.
The marriage of labor and equipment tacking ties Kronos’ Overall Labor Effectiveness metric to the more traditional measure of Overall Equipment Effectiveness, which many manufacturers use to assess the performance of their machinery.