Paul says: "We've been primarily focused on the oil and gas industry for the best part of 60 years, manufacturing predominantly walling products — whenever you see the walls on oil rigs, we've done most of them all around the world. There are only three companies in the world that do what we do, so it's quite a niche market.
"We were looking to transition from old punch cards to something a bit more modern. Back then we were a design engineering house and a manufacturing facility, so we had a lot of platers and welders, with quite a big shop floor. We did a bit of research, looked at a few options for time and attendance and Tensor won the contract. It's worked well for us ever since; to be fair, time and attendance doesn't change that much in 23 years, but it's been pretty bulletproof."
Time and attendance for manufacturing facilities
Throughout near-60 years of operation, Mech-Tool Engineering has fluctuated in size depending on the work that is being done. This means that while the company currently has around 60 people on one site, this hasn't always been the case.
"Around 2016 we took on two other manufacturing facilities," says Paul, "and we put clocks in them as well. It was a really big contract, and we had the client embedded with us as well; at our peak, we had about 350 people with clock cards.
"We weren't interested in the client's time and attendance, but we were interested in access control to limit their access on site. That was the first time we became involved with access control. That meant that as well as having to control access for our own office staff and shop floor, we had to allow for a lot of contractors, agency electricians and suchlike, and then the client themselves.
"That contract lasted a few years; when it ended we finished renting those big facilities and pulled back everything back to Darlington, so we dropped access control at that point."
Access control provides increased security
Despite primarily catering to the oil and gas industry, over the years, Mech-Tool Engineering has diversified occasionally, and in the last few years has branched out into the defence sector. This has resulted in a significant change for the company, says Paul:
"For 40 years we have been in the same head office, but we've just built a custom-made factory for defence and moved our head office onto the new production site. It's the first time in our history that we've had offices and production on one site, and it means that now all the clocks are on one site — which has made things an awful lot easier.
"Our work is now probably split 50/50 between oil and gas and defence. We're currently working on a big government defence contract, and I wouldn't be surprised if in five years' time we aren't 80% defence and 20% oil and gas. That means the level of security increases massively, so the decision was taken to go back to using more sophisticated access control.
"There are maglocks on all the doors inside to limit who can get around particular parts of the building, and we've got electric gates with proximity card gate entry as well as normal scan pads so employees can use their smartcards on the long-range readers to get through the gates. Tensor also installed intercoms on the two main gates for visitors and delivery drivers; they just press the buzzer, our receptionist gets notified and she can speak to them and open the gate from there.
"We're also currently doing some work for another client who came around recently for an audit; they were very impressed with the gates, all the maglocks, and our separate CCTV system. Obviously I've got copies of Tensor's industry standards and things like that, so we could say that the system's compliant with British standards. It was a sort of validation, if you like, that we've done the right thing and beefed-up security."
A time and attendance system that can span continents
In addition to using Tensor's Time and Attendance system at their UK facilities, Mech-Tool Engineering has also utilised it on the other side of the world.
"We've had a steel manufacturing facility in South Korea for about 15 years," explains Paul. "We've rented about four factories in that time, with the size depending on the workload we've got and what the forward load looks like.
"In 2019 I flew out and we put two Tensor clocks in the factory we had at that time, which was a lot bigger with many more people. Our ERP system is set up there as well, so we could look in on them from the UK and see all their clockings using live data.
"At the moment we've only got a handful of people there. The clocks are still installed, but they're not using them — but if we get another big job out there we can just plug it all back in."
A versatile but easy-to-use system
One of the benefits of a Tensor system is that its Tensor.NET software is used to manage all aspects of Time and Attendance, Access Control, HR and Visitor Monitoring, allowing for a streamlined and convenient way to control access rights, monitor staff clocking, and run reports. Paul says the system is simple to use but manages their changing needs with ease:
"There are a couple of us experienced enough to use the system, but we don't turn over a lot of staff so there aren't a lot of changes and it's really easy to add new staff — you just copy an existing employee, put the new name in there, and assign them a card. We don't need to do much more than that. When people leave it's very easy: just a case of unassigning clock cards and marking people as leavers, that's it.
"In the past we've had a lot of change, with people needing to be added to and removed from the system, and at one point we had a lot of departments, shift patterns, groups, and access patterns in the database. They're all still sitting in there, but at the moment we basically only use two departments — office and manufacturing — so it's really basic."
In addition to having everything accessible from one place, the modular yet integrated nature of Tensor.NET means that additional features can be added as required, including the Self-Service Module, integrated CCTV, and Fire Roll Call.
Mech-Tool Engineering have been using the latter for several years as a quick and easy way to manage staff roll call in an emergency: "The Fire Roll Call is pretty bulletproof," says Paul. "As soon as the fire alarm trips, we've got a little LaserJet printer that prints out the roll call. The only thing that goes wrong is human error: people not clocking in and out, or clocking in when they're clocking out and vice versa."
Tensor systems can also export reports for use in other programmes, which allows data for clocking, absences, pay and other staff information to be easily used further: "We still do a report every week from Tensor that we import into Sage Payroll," explains Paul. "And our own in-house MRP system takes all the clocking information from the Tensor database and uses it to do all sorts of other things, track progress and things like that."
Help and support is always on hand
Learning how to use a newly installed system, particularly one that has so much scope, will always involve a learning curve, but Tensor provides training to ensure all personnel who need to use the system can do so without any issues. In addition, should further guidance or instruction be required later — for new staff, new features, or just as a refresher — sessions can be booked for online or in-person training.
"We had training to start off with," says Paul. "Then when we scaled to about 350 people, we had so much going on that the access control was a lot more complicated, so we had Tensor come in for a couple of days for an additional training session."
The Tensor Helpdesk is also on hand to deal with any concerns or answer any questions online or over the phone, while a maintenance contract ensures a swift response from the operations team to deal with any hardware issues on site. However, Paul says Mech-Tool Engineering has only very occasionally needed to use either of these services:
"The only time we've ever needed the helpdesk is when we've changed something or installing something new, like the gates. We had a maintenance contract at the start, as well as when we had the major expansion, but it's mostly a pretty simple setup, and experience has told us over time that we very rarely have any issues, so we've never kept the maintenance contract — the system is too robust!"
"Runs for years without issue"
For Paul and Mech-Tool Engineering, their Tensor system has given them the security and ease-of-use they need to manage their time and attendance and access control, scaled to suit their varying needs — but with very little input to achieve this.
"I would say the key thing for me about the Tensor system is its robustness," considers Paul.
"Once you've got it set up, there's very little you need to do. It just works away in the background and collects all the clocking times that we need. We never really have any problem with access; every now and then when we're setting it up sometimes someone will end up in the wrong access pattern, but once everyone's set up, it's pretty much faultless.
"Once it's installed it's just going to run for years without issue, collecting all the data you ever want. Obviously, we don't use all of the functions, but in terms of time and attendance and access control, I'd say it's difficult to find a better system.
"We've been a happy customer for 23 years."