BOMBARDIER IN INDIA: • Railway vehicle manufacturing site in Savli, Gujarat
• Propulsion and control centre in Vadodara, Gujarat
• Software development centre in Vadodara, Gujarat
• An engineering centre in Hyderabad
• Four sales and marketing offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai
• A project office in New Delhi
• Four depot offices in New Delhi
About Bombardier
Bombardier Transportation has its global headquarters in Berlin, Germany, with a presence in more than 60 countries. It has an installed base of more than 100,000 vehicles worldwide. The group offers the broadest product portfolio and is recognised as the leader in the global rail sector.
Bombardier Transportation has been present in India for more than 35 years. It has supplied Indian Railways with technologically advanced rail products, electric locomotives for passenger and freight applications, and traffic management systems.
Bombardier Transportation is steadily ramping up its presence in India. Savli, Gujarat, is home to its new railway vehicle manufacturing site, propulsion systems manufacturing facility, and software development centre for signalling and traction applications in India and for other Bombardier Transportation projects around the globe.
Planning for enhanced productivity and bottom-line cost control
 Globally Bombardier is able to retain the highest levels of quality and hence sustain the leadership position by continuously ensuring that it is at the forefront of technology deployment for managing the 5 M’s required for manufacturing its products.Given the nature of the industry that Bombardier operates in, it is required to have complete information in real time on the workforce and resources on the shop floor that are being used against each work order. In order to maintain its competitive position, it needs a solution that helps in controlling costs, provides effective workforce and resource management, and helps adhere to and maintain productivity on global standards/metrics.
Hence it is imperative that the solution used by Bombardier would help-
1) To identify the status of the work order automatically without manual intervention in real time against the plan
2) Effectively deploy the required workforce for achieving the output and within cost 3) Measure workforce productivity in accordance with companies’ global standards
4) Manage unnecessary costs such as overtime
5) Ensure compliance with the law of the land and other company policies
SAP was deployed for managing the enterprise resources of the organisation but there were areas that could not be addressed by the deployed solution. This unaddressed requirement prompted Bombardier to search for a solution that would effectively bridge the gap between actual status on the shop floor and the ERP solution and complement the complete IT and HR setup aspects by integrating seamlessly.
Since the Bombardier manufacturing site was a greenfield project, Bombardier wanted to have a comprehensive solution from day one that would plug the possible gaps in the current processes and automate the same. As Bombardier is a global entity, it was required that the deployed solution should complement the existing ERP solution and should also extend to address requirements such as controlling the entry and exit of authorised personnel as well as canteen management and visitor management.
Search for solution ends
Bombardier’s team was exploring the options for a solution that would completely address the requirements and was looking at multiple options for all aspects identified as requirements. This was the time when the Kronos team started its interactions with the Bombardier team and provided a complete solution that addressed all the requirements. The case was strengthened because Bombardier was already using Kronos solutions at other locations across the globe.
The Kronos solution provided a single solution and complemented the deployed ERP by integrating seamlessly, using certified adapters.
Solution details and benefits
Being a greenfield project helped Bombardier’s case for completely automating the punch-to-pay cycle, bringing in systems that help in controlling the entry/exit of authorised personnel from the facility, visitor management, and canteen (lunch coupon) management and most importantly deploy the online shop floor data collection solution that integrated seamlessly with the ERP and provided all the information related to workforce utilisation, resource utilisation and the like.
Kronos deployed the Kronos 4500™ terminal coupled with the Kronos Workforce Timekeeper™ and Workforce Activities™ applications to automate the punch-to-pay cycle, canteen coupon management, and access control, and most importantly enable real-time shop floor data collection for visibility into workforce and resource utilisation and real-time data on status of work orders. The Kronos Workforce Connect™ application was deployed to integrate seamlessly with SAP and ADP for export and import of data.
Enhanced shop floor visibility and control
The Kronos solution now provides real-time labour and workforce cost information at the fingertips of the supervisors. Managers can immediately know the status of customer orders in real time rather than wait for information to trickle through at the end of the day after manual collation of data. Supervisors can view the WIP using multiple tools such as My Genies® and reports that are provided as a standard feature in Kronos. These functionalities help a manager know the completion status of work orders in his department. This insight coupled with the scheduling feature of Workforce Timekeeper helps managers effectively plan for scheduling the required manpower for completion of a work order against the plan.
As a process, the work order is generated in the SAP and the same is printed in a bar code format, and the Kronos 4500 terminal is used to capture the shop floor information by reading the bar code information on the work order and the badge ID of the employee. The same terminal is capable of reading both the badges of employees and the work orders. This mapping of work order against the employee badge ID provides complete information on the status of “who” is working on “which” work order and for “how long”. This data helps in understanding the productivity of employees as well. The data captured is then exported into SAP for further planning in the ERP.
This level of information helps managers gain a financial perspective and provides accurate billing and project time completion figures.
From an employee perspective this information benefits the morale of employees and supervisors as well. With these periodic updates, employees become more aware of how they are spending their work hours, thereby increasing productivity. With extensive information at their fingertips, managers can determine the correct task for each employee and whether additional training is needed. The Kronos solution provides the ability to optimise direct labour resources through waste reductions and to collect and analyse labour data across a wide range of criteria such as employee, job code, type of hours used for the production department, and project.
Automate the punch-to-pay cycle
Kronos has deployed the Workforce Timekeeper solution to completely automate the punch-to-pay cycle. Workforce Timekeeper completely automated the application of all rules like identification of exceptions and calculation of overtime, among others. Bombardier effectively used the “management by exception” principle of Kronos to ensure that managers would need to act only if they get Kronos Alerts with specific information of the exception — this cuts down on additional work like exception identification. This helps managers spend more time in managing production-related activities. The best practice-based workflows deployed helped in doing away with paper-based processes. This, added to the real-time application of all rules, cut away the errors that could have possibly crept into payroll processing.
Kronos also provided the payroll output data file that included employee pay-related information such as days worked, days on leave, type of leave, overtime hours worked, and the like, to ADP.
Extending the value add
Access control and visitor management:
Bombardier also wanted the solution to be extended to “control the access” of authorised employees and manage visitors.
In order to cater to this requirement, Kronos terminals are connected to turnstiles to control the entry and exit of employees from the facility. The Kronos 4500 terminal checks the badge number of the badge presented at the turnstile and matches it against the badge list of employees authorised to enter/exit and then sends a signal to the turnstile relay to turn, thus allowing the entry or exit of employees.
Bombardier also wanted to use the system to manage visitors on the premises. The security department is provided access to the application to enter the details of visitors into Kronos, and an authorised access card is provided from a predefined set of cards purely meant to be issued to visitors. The validity of the visitor card is normally only one day, and the card is disabled at the end of the same day. This ensures that all visitors are recorded at the security department and no unauthorised personnel gains access to company premises.
Canteen management:
The solution was also extended to provide information on the number of employees who have used the canteen facility during lunch and dinner breaks. This is required for control of the number of meals that are being served against the number of meals that are being charged by the canteen vendor. To capture this information, the Kronos 4500 terminal was deployed at the point of picking up the plate in the canteen. The employee just swipes the card at the terminal and the data is captured that the meal has been utilised. The cumulative numbers are rolled up at the organisation level, and the vendor is paid based on the exact count of meals served.
Kronos helped Bombardier gain significant benefits by bridging the information between production systems and workforce deployed for managing production. Coupled with Kronos terminals, the time and attendance processing were automated to provide accurate data for payroll processing.
The case study has been contributed by Kronos |
