Albany International Limited is a global business with a base at Bury in Lancashire and employs nearly 150 staff. Its primary business is supplying the expanding world paper industry with consumable, technologically sophisticated products called paper machine clothing. Paper machine clothing is used to produce all grades of paper from lightweight sanitary tissue to heavyweight container board. These custom-designed engineered fabrics, essential to the paper making process, are manufactured from monofilament and synthetic fibre materials. This basic technology is also utilized for other industrial process applications.
Albany International clocks on securely with Tensor
Albany were looking for a time and attendance and access control system for their site. The criteria for the new system was that it had to be able to handle the size of the site and also to cope with the number of employees. After reviewing the different systems on the market and seeing a demonstration of the Tensor WinTA system, Albany decided to install a Tensor smart card based system to manage the access to their factory as well and clocking the employees at the start and end of the working day.
The Tensor WinTA system has now been working for decades. Most importantly it has met its objectives of being fast, reliable and to provide a secure method of gaining entry to the premises. During this long time the system has been supported by Tensor’s help desk and the operations department for product maintenance. When asked what they thought of the quality of this service, Albany responded “very professional and helpful”.
Lee Constable, a plant manager of Albany International, explained that what he liked most about the Tensor system was “The versatility of the set-up; the hardware and software can be modified and upgraded if we want. The employees can also request personnel issues like booking time off, at the clocking station”.
The employees of Albany were initially trained in the use of the system and have received further training over time when new releases of the software have been installed or when new-starters have joined the company. Their assessment of the quality of the training they received was “very good, very professional”.
Lee said he was “impressed” by the WinTA software, which can handle all major hours’ calculation methods and shift patterns as well as exporting to all major payroll systems, allowing efficient management of the workforce.
We then asked about what Albany thought of the Tensor smart cards, the readers and the speed of response? A familiar response came forth, “so easy to use and operate”. This is because the Tensor smart cards have a very fast read time which is particularly useful for door Access Control. The cards just need to be presented within 150mm of the reader to be read which is much more convenient than swipe card systems.
Lee Constable said he would recommend Tensor to other companies considering installing combined time & attendance and access control system, and concluded by saying of Tensor, “First class service and product from a first class company”.
Albany International Ltd
PO Box 35 Pilsworth Road Bury Lancashire BL9 8QE Tel: 0161 7677531 Website: www.albint.com