Auckland based Empower Factory Productivity and Scheduling Software has been developing labour management and scheduling software for 16 years. Empower Software is cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) based. Empower has clients across 27 manufacturing and engineering industry groups and now supplies 204 engineering and manufacturing clients throughout New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Canada, South Africa and the Philippines.

Currently an estimated 95% of all manufacturers and engineers globally do NOT track their factory staff times on their jobs at all or they use manual time cards which their factory staff fill out at day end, which don’t motivate factory staff to work promptly and are typically 20 to 40% inaccurate in recording time.

Empower’s Software technology uses tablets on the factory floor for tracking and reporting job times, staff times and work in progress live from the factory floor reporting to management and administration staff in the offices. The production plan and production schedule is also updated live when factory staff register start and finish on all jobs on the factory floor tablets.

Factory staff log on to all their respective manufacturing and downtime jobs for 40 hours per week, standard week. The budgeted times and actual completed times of all jobs is always viewable to factory staff and all management. Labour times on jobs and labour costs on jobs typically reduce by 20 to 40% when using the technology, which typically results in a 60 to 120% increase in annual profit. This is certainly disruptive technology as other manufacturers and engineers can not compete on labour times and labour cost without this technology.

Industry 4.0, Lean Manufacturing, Advanced Manufacturing, JIT Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and Kaizan can all use this technology which provides live accurate production data to be able to comprehensively and accurately plan and monitor daily production.

Cloud Software technology provides the following significant benefits to manufacturing and engineering industries.

Manufacturing and Engineering Client benefits:

• Live Empower production and productivity information is presented on large 50 or 100 inch TV monitors on factory and office walls.
• Application Program Interface (API) and documentation enables seamless connection to accounting or ERP accounting software or any other existing software.
• Empower can be accessed and used on any device from any location with internet connection at any time. Management can plan and schedule production, and monitor today’s production and productivity in real time from the golf course.
• Business advisors, lean manufacturing consultants and manufacturing experts at Empower HQ can collaborate with manufacturing and engineering clients with full time access to clients systems can monitor and give expert manufacturing advice on daily Key Performance Indicators and any issues.
• Daily production and productivity data is securely stored off site and backed up professionally.
• High tech functionality and reporting is available within Empower Software including Google Earth tracking and reporting of mobile staff and facial recognition of factory staff when they log start and finish for wages and when they log start and finish on jobs.

Empower Software HQ benefits:

• The latest version of software (ie upgrades) are supplied to all 204 clients “over night” and every updates are every 10 days.
• A wide range of leading software development tools are available to developers. This means more advanced software: functionality, reporting and screens and shorter software development timelines.
• Available software development staff resource who only want to work in the latest software tools and technology.
• API connection to leading accounting and enterprise level accounting software including: Accredo, MYOB and Quickbooks.
• 30 day Trial Software is provided to manufacturers and engineers directly from the Empower website.