Hand Scanners Send Buddy Punching Packing At Simkins Industries

by Alex Woodie

Work sometimes played second fiddle to games at Simkins Industries, a Connecticut manufacturer of packing materials. "In one facility, we had a group of employees playing poker at lunch," says John Liversidge, the company's IT manager. "When it was time to return to work, they simply handed off their timecards and were punched in by a fellow employee, so they could continue their game." With 14 new HandPunch terminals connected to an OS/400-based payroll system, the days of buddy punching at Simkins are over.

Simkins Industries was founded in 1901 as the New Haven Pulp and Paper Company. Today the company is one of the leading family owned manufacturers of folding cartons, 100 percent recycled paperboard, and specialty papers, and it employs hundreds of people in manufacturing plants located in 13 cities across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

About four-and-a-half years ago, Simkins decided to eliminate the timecard-based system that allowed a culture of buddy punching to flourish. While the company didn't have any hard data on the toll that buddy punching was having on employee productivity or on the company's profitability, it was apparent the practice was widespread at some facilities, Liversidge says. "We knew it was going on, and every once in a while we did catch somebody," he says. "But we didn't have a good handle on it. It was a hard thing to prove."

Simkins first attempt to stop buddy punching involved biometric fingerprint scanners. Because everybody has a unique fingerprint, employees would not be able to clock in for their coworkers using the fingerprint scanners. If all worked as planned, the fingerprint scanners would eliminate buddy punching at Simkins Industries. But the company had problems with the new system.

Although Liversidge liked the PC-based software that drove the new biometric timeclocks, the company could not get the fingerprint scanners embedded in the timeclocks to work properly on a consistent basis. Employees sometimes wouldn't be able to clock in using the fingerprint scanners, because the timeclocks had somehow lost their fingerprint templates, Liversidge says. "We didn't have much luck with them," he says.

After unsuccessfully trying out finger scanning technology, Simkins enlisted the help of Optimum Solutions, a Nashville, Tennessee, company that develops OS/400-based time and attendance software, as well as payroll, human resources, and applicant tracking applications. Simkins already used Optimum software, Liversidge says, and had AS/400s for other workloads, when it decided to add Optimum's time and attendance application in a fresh attempt to eliminate timecard fraud.

Simkins followed Optimum Solutions' recommendation to purchase the HandPunch 3000 terminals to function as the timeclocks that interface with the time and attendance software. The HandPunch 3000s are manufactured by Recognition Systems, the biometric component of Ingersoll-Rand Corp.'s Security & Safety Group's Electronic Access Control Division.

The biometric driver underlying the HandPunch 3000 is hand geometry. By taking a three-dimensional image of the hand each time an employee punches in, and verifying that that hand's size and shape matches the baseline template, the HandPunch 3000 can accurately verify an employee's identity, without compromising the employee's privacy, by using a palm print or fingerprint. Processing time is less than one second, and the employee is informed of the transaction's outcome with a simple red or green light.

Simkins installed 14 HandPunch 3000 terminals, which cost about $2,000 each, Liversidge says. Installing and setting up the devices, which communicate with the Optimum Solutions time and attendance software via TCP/IP, was pretty straightforward, and human resources personnel can easily be trained to enroll new employees into the system, he says.

If Liversidge has one gripe, it's not the HandPunch 3000 terminals. "These things work beautifully. No false positives," he says. The interface for the time and attendance software, however, is "very cumbersome," he says. "I had nothing to do with choosing the software."

Today, more than 300 employees at facilities in several states clock in and out daily with the HandPunch terminals, which are placed at the entrance of each facility. Some departments also clock in and out for lunch, keeping tabs on those lunchtime poker sessions.

Some Simkins plants are still using paper timecards, but soon all of its facilities will be upgraded to the biometric terminals from Recognition Systems. Simkins officials are also considering using the terminals at one facility that produces medical cartons, for increased access control security. The higher-end HandPunch terminals can also be used to control locks on doors.

If the use of hand scanners sounds too futuristic to be mainstream today, you may be surprised by the pace at which this technology is being adopted. According to Frost & Sullivan's "World Biometrics Report 2002," hand geometry technology was the most commonly used technology for time and attendance and access control in 2001, outpacing the use of all other biometric forms of authentication combined. That report also conferred Recognition Systems, which has sold more than 75,000 HandPunch systems since 1986, as the largest supplier of hand geometry technology that year.