Kronos Incorporated Announces ShopTrac Pro

Kronos Incorporated (Nasdaq: KRON), the industry leader in frontline labor management solutions, today announced ShopTrac Pro, a solution for discrete and batch process manufacturers who seek improved labor productivity and increased operational efficiency on the shop floor. ShopTrac Pro, currently in its beta phase, is scheduled for general availability this summer.

"Kronos' ShopTrac Pro provides an interesting combination of capabilities for manufacturers," said Bill Swanton, vice president of manufacturing strategies at Boston-based AMR Research. "On a technical level, it helps manage plants where labor costs are important, which is a weakness of most MES packages. On a market level, Kronos' extensive national and international sales and service capabilities uniquely position it to satisfy both mid-market and large global manufacturers."

ShopTrac Pro is a labor-focused execution system that helps manufacturers execute production plans on a day-to-day basis, with a key emphasis on capturing and tracking time and labor activities on the shop floor. It provides robust labor tracking capabilities, including direct and indirect time; views labor by work order, job, departments and team; tracks work-in-process; and can provide an up-to-the-minute status of where production is at any moment in time. In addition, ShopTrac Pro can provide detailed tracking of all shop floor-related resources that are used by employees during the course of the day -- such as machine usage during production.

"By arming frontline managers with the tools to provide instant visibility into production, they can better manage their labor resources, and deliver quality products and service," said Paul Hoy, vice president of Kronos' Manufacturing Systems Division. "ShopTrac Pro takes this one step further by making the same information available to planning applications so that operational improvements can be realized over time."

In addition to acting as a stand-alone shop floor control system, ShopTrac Pro can also interface to other enterprise systems -- such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) -- that may be used to manage non labor-related data in a manufacturing environment. Some of the ways that ShopTrac Pro compliments enterprise systems include:

• Optimizing human resources and payroll processes by feeding data from ShopTrac Pro's time and attendance module into human resource and payroll applications, eliminating the need to re-enter labor-related data. ShopTrac Pro also has the ability to reconcile payroll hours with labor hours worked on the shop floor.
• Simplifying production tracking by accepting production schedule and work order data from an ERP system. ShopTrac Pro tracks labor activities as they occur on the shop floor, compares schedules to actual time worked and identifies variances, then closes the information loop by feeding updated production information back to the ERP system.

How It Works

ShopTrac Pro captures time, labor and material usage at every stage of the production process. Collection devices - such as terminals with badge readers - are used to capture relevant information. This data is processed in real-time to give frontline managers up-to-the-minute information on production costs, the location of every job on the shop floor and the projected completion time for each job. This information helps users make better decisions about manufacturing cycles, control product costs and improve production efficiency. ShopTrac Pro is comprised of several functional areas, including:

• Labor Allocation - Captures and reports complete detail of hours worked by employee, work order, operation and department. Employees can log onto multiple jobs concurrently and track both their direct and indirect time. Hours are calculated online and can be analyzed by employee, part number, work order, department, task, etc.
• Work-in-Process (WIP) - Provides work order status for every operation - from set-up to final inspection. Can provide job details for any job within a work center, as well as provide current status information. WIP can be tracked by part number, serial number or lot number and machine.
• Quality - Gives immediate feedback by operation or employee on how much and what type of scrap is occurring and its overall effect on production output.
• Time and Attendance - Automates the collection of employee hours and feeds relevant data to a payroll system resulting in improved payroll accuracy. Captures each employee's in- and out-times and lets supervisors generate a number of standard, on-demand reports. Reports provide frontline supervisors with the information they need to proactively manage their employees.
• Productivity Analysis - Calculate and measure production efficiencies against standards. View efficiency by time, employee, work order, part, product, department, team and machine.

ShopTrac Pro is targeted at manufacturers of a wide variety of products, including food, paper, electronics, automotive, fabricated metals, industrial machinery and transportation equipment.

Kronos in Manufacturing

Today, Kronos solutions for frontline labor management are used by more than 10,000 manufacturers worldwide. For the 4th consecutive year, Kronos has earned a place on Manufacturing Systems' "Top 100 Software" list. Kronos ranked #24 in 1998.

About Kronos Incorporated

Kronos is the world's #1 provider of solutions for frontline labor management. Founded in 1977, Kronos has been universally recognized as the pioneer of labor management systems with over 50 percent market share and 1,600 employees worldwide. The Waltham, Mass.-based company offers the industry's broadest suite of applications for managing employee time and activity data, scheduling the workforce, and providing frontline managers with the tools they need to measure and improve labor productivity.