Case Studies | Page 7

British Optical Ltd has an enviable reputation for being World leaders for the supply of Optics for Entertainment Lighting, rod moulding, Reflectors and Projection Optics. Their main operation is based at Aldridge, Walsall. British Optical’s Accountant, Alan Clark, was in charge of getting a new Time & Attendance system to replace their old Blick swipe card system. They wanted to replace the Blick system because of the high maintenance cost, but had to wait until the long (5 year) contract with Blick had expired before they could replace it.

Based in London, Harvey & Brockless are a premier supplier of quality cheese products and food ingredients to the UK and Europe.

For more than 100 years Tetley have been producing the nations tea and today manufacture tea which is exported all over the world. The main UK manufacturing site, based in Eaglescliffe, Co Durham, employs around 600 personnel.

Derbyshire Fire & Rescue needed a simple “non computerised” access control system for their new command centre in Derby, but at the same time they wanted it to use the latest technology. After reviewing several different types of system they chose the T2002 from Tensor. “The Tensor T2002 was the easiest-to-use system we came across.” said Steve Holt-Garner, Information Servce Manager for Derbyshire Fire & Rescue. “It’s fast, reliable and requires no PC’s to run it, and very little maintenance.”

Waterside Garden Centre, Peterborough is not a Garden Centre in the traditional sense but a destination in itself. It allows customers to stroll around the centre’s scenic plant area, walk on the adjacent Fenland Nature Trail and peruse their wide ranging selection of products for the home and garden, pets and fish.

Sun Valley, a recognised leader in the European food industry, recently have installed a WinTA system to control access control at their UK sites. From turnstiles and car park barriers to internal doors the system had to allow the staff to gain access quickly while providing an accurate procedure for accounting for all members of staff and visitors in emergency situations.

Fenmarc is a large supplier of a wide range of quality fresh and prepared produce to major supermarkets. It employs over 500 people at its 3 factories – 2 within 10 miles of March and another 70 miles away at Swinderby.

Queensgate Shopping Centre dominates the centre of Peterborough. It is owned by Norwich Union and managed by Jones Lang LaSalle. The centre is completely covered, has two shopping levels and over 90 shops. The anchor stores are John Lewis, Waitrose, BHS, M&S, H&M, Boots and Argos. The Centre is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which involves staff working various shift patterns.

Hallmark Consumer Services, based in Melton Mowbray in the heart of Leicestershire, is a private company, has a 25,000 sq. ft modern racked warehouse, call centre and office facilities all coordinated from one site.  The factory employs around 50 office and warehouse staff at this site. “The warehouse staff are paid weekly and the office and call staff are paid monthly. Originally the warehouse staff completed manual timesheets which were processed weekly. Very labour intensive!” Said Philip Hall.

Jewson is the UK’s foremost Timber and Building Materials Supplier with over 586 branches nationwide, many of which contain a tool hire facility too. – so you can buy and hire under the same roof.  The national distribution centre located in Cannock just north of Birmingham serves over 586 Jewson Group stores around the UK and used to have an old punch-card time and attendance system. They installed a Tensor system to reduce the amount of administration time taken in processing the 90 warehouse employee time cards.

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.

York Barbell is one of the worlds leading brands of fitness equipment, designing and manufacturing products in Canada, the UK, USA and the Far East. Their equipment is distributed to 40 countries around the world. In January 2000 Operations Manager, Nelson Oliver, was in search of a computerised Time & Attendance system which included a good Absence Planning system and Access Control facility for the factory itself and the area where personnel records were kept.