When Software Gets ResultsWhen Software Gets Results

Sometimes, technology really is magic. Case in point: Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America, which produces 240,000 vehicles annually, has reduced the number of hours it takes to produce a car from 37 to 23.9, thanks largely to an IT initiative in which it deployed Kronos Inc.'s Workforce Central labor management software. The software, which Mitsubishi is using to manage 3,300 full-time employees and 200 part-time workers, has helped the company shave hundreds of dollars off the production costs for each vehicle.

Andy Whaley, manager of accounting at Mitsubishi, says Kronos' software lets the automaker perform daily calculations on the number of hours required to build a car, rather than having to wait three weeks or longer to quantify worker productivity. Mitsubishi won't divulge the cost of the software or the overall IT project.

Whaley says Mitsubishi selected Kronos a year ago after management mandated a major improvement in the number of hours required to assemble each vehicle. At the time, Mitsubishi used paper time cards to track the hours worked by its employees and thus wasn't able to track the hours employees worked on a daily basis and compare them to the production total. Instead, it had to hire temporary workers to input data every other week from the time cards into the company's mainframe payroll system.

As part of the initiative, Mitsubishi switched to a system in which scanners read employee ID badges at 60 locations around the plant. Kronos' software tracks all employees at work in real time and reports on the total number of man hours worked at the plant at the end of each day. The system can quickly determine each morning whether more employees have reported to work than are required for that day's production schedule, allowing Mitsubishi to offer some employees an unpaid day off. Whaley says many employees are eager to take the free time.