New White Paper Shows Driving Workforce Performance is the Game Changer for Chinese Manufacturing

BEIJING, Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Kronos Incorporated today announced the availability of a new white paper from IDC Manufacturing Insights that shows the necessity for Chinese manufacturers to improve productivity, which indicates that Chinese manufacturers should adopt effective workforce management solutions to achieve a quantum leap in productivity and efficiency. Sponsored by Kronos, the white paper titled “Driving Workforce Performance: Game Changer for Chinese Manufacturing” is jointly released by Kronos and IDC China’s Industry Research and Consulting group.

News Facts

• Chinese manufacturers are facing the increasing pressure on labor costs. In June 2011, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China announced that in the next five years, salary will at least have an average growth of 13%. The white paper form IDC Manufacturing Insights indicates that the top 3 priorities of Greater China manufacturing business drivers in next 12 to 18 months are reducing costs, increasing revenue, and improving productivity.
• Chinese manufacturers are starting to consider productivity improvements as a key strategy to stay competitive. The IDC Manufacturing Insights 2011 Business and IT Priorities survey found that 31% of the 120 Chinese manufacturers surveyed were considering some form of low-cost country manufacturing, compared to 64% who were looking to adopt productivity improvement programs like Lean and Six Sigma – the highest of the countries that were surveyed within the APeJ region.
• Traditional reporting, driven by ERP production results and device outputs, is inadequate to drive productivity, as it does not provide feedback on what is actually happening at the process level granularly. Organizations need to have the ability to identify and understand the root causes behind all non-value added activities on the shop floor and provide immediate corrective actions.
• Chinese manufacturers can benefit through the implementation of a workforce management solution in a number of ways:

o       Accurate and timely payroll ensuring that the employer and employees transact in a timely, efficient, and recordable manner.

o       Gathering accurate data at the manufacturing process, as to what is the delay in production, allowing the manufacturing process to be analyzed and productivity improvement to be made.

o       Reporting accurate data to meet compliance requirements as to the state of the workforce, in particular the number of hours worked.

o       Mobilizing the workforce to balance manufacturing and assembly work across the business to cope with production variations.

• This IDC Manufacturing Insights white paper highlights two local Chinese manufacturers -- TTI Group and Metso Minerals (Tianjin) Co Ltd -- which have started the journey to efficiency and productivity by adopting workforce management solutions to gain better control over their human resources.

Supporting Quotes

• Leon Xiao, senior analyst,  IDC China

“Chinese manufacturers must act now to stay competitive amidst rising wages and costs of doing business. They need to get cleverer at the way they operate, and that means taking a serious look at their workforce. Workforce management offers an effective approach to helping manufacturers differentiate themselves from the competition. Workforce management solution providers like Kronos help address inefficient processes by providing better visibility into the workforce and manufacturing operations.”

• Maxwell Miao, general manager of Greater China, Kronos

“China is undergoing the dramatic economy transformation in recent years. It's time to transform workforce of manufacturers from an expense to be their competitive advantage. The IDC manufacturing insight whitepaper directs the way manufacturers adopting IT technologies like workforce management to automate the workforce related process, get visibility of granular real-time information, as to improve productivity and achieve operational excellence.”

• Duke Shan, IT manager, Metso Minerals（Tianjing）

“By deploying the Kronos solution and integrating seamlessly with our ERP system, we have gained visibility into manufacturing process which not only provides real-time access to workforce data such as labor activity tracking, scheduling, and actual working hours, but also helps us better control WIPs, order completion cycle, productivity, and direct labor cost. The visibility into manufacturing and resources enables us to improve productivity, on time delivery, and better job costing.”

Supporting Resources

• Full report can be downloaded here.

About Kronos Incorporated

Kronos is the global leader in workforce management solutions that enable organizations to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve workforce productivity. Tens of thousands of organizations in 60 countries -- including more than half of the Fortune 1000^® -- use Kronos time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, HR and payroll, hiring, and labor analytics applications. To learn how Kronos uniquely delivers complete automation and high-quality information in an easy-to-use solution, visit www.kronos.cn/en.

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