Workforce management solution offers packaging company visibility

Plastipak Packaging, a world leader in the design and manufacture of plastic containers for the food, beverage and consumer products industries, operates more than 27 sites in the U.S., South America and Europe. During the company’s rapid growth, the need for reliable and timely workforce management data, and the tools to help managers more effectively utilize that data, became increasingly apparent. 

Challenges emerged

As Plastipak grew in size and complexity, shop floor supervisors were having difficulty anticipating overtime with the paper schedules they were using, and they had zero visibility into employee punches. Creating custom analytics reports was a struggle, as was deploying them to end-users. In addition, it was becoming increasingly tedious and time-consuming to manually manage employee attendance data.

Kronos answered the call

Plastipak had been using a Kronos timekeeping solution at its U.S. locations for years, integrating it with SAP for HR, payroll and enterprise resource planning. But the company wanted more detailed reporting and greater insight into its workforce and production lines, so that it could make decisions based on facts. Plastipak added the Kronos Workforce Analytics solution, while upgrading its Kronos Workforce Central suite plant-by-plant. 

The Kronos Services team was there to assist in the development of custom reports, and deployment into the field, so that the company could quickly gain insight on how to increase workforce productivity and better control labour costs. Not only was this extremely helpful for the company, but it was also very quick. Once the Kronos Services team created the custom analytics reports, they were able to train users in how to utilize and tailor the reports in just two days.

Many benefits realized

By integrating time, attendance and scheduling data, Plastipak is able to evaluate shop floor punch data to forecast overtime and help managers see why overtime occurred. Shop floor supervisors use this data for better visibility into the number of employees and hours worked in a production area. Adding attendance rules and data to the solution will enable HR managers to quickly see which employees are eligible for attendance incentives, creating tremendous time savings. 

Thanks to the workforce analytics data the Kronos products provide, Plastipak is realizing effective workforce management. 

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