C B L Ceramics Enjoys Long-Term Reliability with Tensor WinTA Start Time and Attendance System

C B L Ceramics is a manufacturer of specialist ceramics products based in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. The company focuses on the manufacture of beryllium oxide ceramics and hot pressed composite ceramics with complete in-house facilities for pressing, firing, metallizing and precision machining of simple to complex parts.

Back in 2008, the firm started searching for a modern system that would enable them to streamline time and attendance recording and roll call at their manufacturing site from Milford Haven, Mr. Nigel Heath, Purchasing Manager for C B L Ceramics, told the Tensor reporter.

Although the company's board considered several competing systems at the time, C B L Ceramics decided to choose the Tensor solution after Mr. Heath was provided with a free trial version of the WinTA software and discovered that it perfectly suited the company's needs.

As the it employs around 23 permanent members of staff at their site, C B L Ceramics opted for the WinTA Start package, Tensor's world-class Smart Card based Time & Attendance and Integrated Security Management System for single site companies.

The WinTA Time & Attendance software package has the ability to handle up to 50 employees and combines the requirements of Time and Attendance, Access Control, Visitor Monitoring, and Identification Pass production, with our fast Smart Card and Biometrics electronics, to create the ultimate Time Management and Security system.

Hardware-wise, the system features a T8440 Time & Attendance clocking station, equipped with a fluorescent lit light blue LCD display with 6 lines of 21 characters that enables larger characters to be shown for the time and In and Out status.

Integral to the T8440 is a Tensor "Smart Card" proximity read scanner capable of reading any of the Tensor smart cards or I.D. Tags, while a high grade "wipe down" keypad and display overlay is suitably legended for Time & Attendance so that employees can log the reasons for going off/on site, such as "out on business" and allow them to record other entries directly at the clocking station.

The T8440 is housed in a plastic case and includes an external mains power supply so that only low voltages exist within the clocking station. Communication to the PC is via an RS232C serial communications port.

C B L Ceramics opted to install the system themselves, a task that they've managed to complete successfully with remote support from the Tensor helpdesk. Despite some initial problems, everything was quickly sorted out, the WinTA system working within the desired parameters to this day.

Although Mr. Heath reckons that they're probably not using the Tensor solution at its full potential right now, he believes that the WinTA Start is "very easy to use", while also revealing that "the reporting side of it is the feature I like most about the Tensor system".

WinTA Start's built-in report generator makes it simple to get the information you need from the system, as it allows users to access a variety of useful reports, such as weekly clock card, lateness report, payroll summary, absence summary, entitlement report, exceptions, etc.

It's also quite interesting to note that a range of output styles lets you export to web-pages, spreadsheets or as simple text files. Web Page output provides professional reports that can be easily viewed and printed from any system (PC, Mac, Linux etc) with an internet browser.

When asked by the Tensor reporter whether he considered the Smart Cards included in the WinTA system to be easy to use, Mr. Heath replied: "The clocking cards are very reliable and easy to use. We had to replace a few of them over time, but that was mostly due to usual wear and tear rather than anything else."

Since installing the WinTA Start system, the company's representatives had to get in touch with the dedicated Tensor Helpdesk analysts on a few occasions in order to resolve some minor functionality issues, but everything was sorted out quite quickly. "We haven't called the support guys for quite a long time, years now, but I remember that when we did call them, they delivered a fine service." Mr. Heath commented.

When asked whether Tensor could improve its overall service, the C B L Ceramics purchasing representative answered "No, I can't really see where". That's also one of the reasons why he also revealed that he would gladly recommend the Tensor WinTA Start system to other companies of the same size as C B L Ceramics.

Summing up, Mr. Nigel Heath said that :"The Tensor WinTA Start system we've installed is indeed a very good product, and a reliable one as well, since we've only experienced a few minor faults over quite a long period of time."

Customer Information

C B L Ceramics Ltd

Marble Hall Road

Milford Haven

Pembrokeshire

SA73 2PP

Phone: 01646 697 681