Guhring Ltd upgrade to Tensor Biometric Access Control System

Guhring is a German based private limited company that was founded in 1898 and now employs approximately 6,000 people in manufacturing, service and sales operations around the world.

Guhring offers customers a complete tooling 'package', including the well established manufacture and supply of rotary cutting tools in addition to full product design, development, tool holding systems, tool management, tool regrinding and recoating plus stockholding.

The company's UK branch, Guhring Limited, was founded in 1973 and started initially as a sales, stocking and distribution operation. However, Guhring Limited has now grown into an established UK manufacturing company with capability to produce special tools on short deliveries and regrind/recoating service.

As the company expanded its activity at their factory in Castle Bromwich Business Park, Tameside Drive, Birmingham, the board of directors decided that they needed a new, top-range electronic Access Control and Time and Attendance system for the plant.

"Our main objective at the time was to install a solid timekeeping system. We wanted to know whether people were actually on-site or not at the time when they were supposed to be there", Yvonne Clune, Finance and IT Manager for Guhring Limited, explained.

After reviewing various systems on the market and carefully studying the proposal from Tensor, Yvonne decided to buy the WinTA Lite system from Tensor plc.

The Time & Attendance and Access Control system installed at Guhring continued to work very well for almost 9 years, fully providing the benefits delivered by Tensor's comprehensive maintenance and after-sales support service.

Since they were very happy with their existing Tensor system but were enticed by the superior functionality delivered by Tensor's latest product called WinTA.NET, the company decided to implement a major hardware and software upgrade.

As part of this process, our engineers installed the latest Tensor Time and Attendance and Access Control systems, including cutting-edge biometric access control technology.

Tensor's Biometric Readers combine the latest generation Smart Card electronics with a fingerprint reader. Housed in an elegant case and easy to use, this product is for those who want the absolute peace-of-mind, certainty and the assurance that only the right people can gain access to sensitive or dangerous areas — in Guhring's case, Stores entrance and Reception.

The installed at Guhring is modular and fully expandable so that its can security from one door all the way up to a multi site, multi national enterprise. It also grants authorised users faster entry to the desired areas — authentication is literally at their fingertips!

Coincidentally, Guhring use the same access control technology as used by their local police force, West Midlands Police. The Clocking Stations installed at the Guhring factory and offices are a shining example of Tensor's latest equipment.

"Our Tensor Access Control and Time and Attendance system employs both smart cards and biometric fingerprint readers. The smart cards are really easy to use, but people tend to lose them every now and then. That's precisely why having biometric readers as a backup is an excellent time and money saving feature", Yvonne explained.

She also added that the system "is very easy to use and certainly does all that we want it to do".

Guhring have used the Tensor help desk facility on a few occasions and their view regarding the quality of the customer support service was "The help desk support is fine. The analysts are very competent".

Yvonne also told our reporter that the Tensor Operations Department engineers had to visit the Guhring site "just once or twice" over a 7-year period, in order to fix some minor functionality issues. "I was very happy with the quality of their service on each occasion", she added.

Overall, Ms Clune is very appreciative of the after-sales support Guhring has received from Tensor. "I don't see where you could do better, really", she replied, when asked where Tensor could improve its services to the company.

Summing up, Yvonne said "The Time and Attendance and Access Control system is solid and easy to use. Tensor always delivers very competent support over the phone, when we needed it. I would certainly recommend Tensor to other companies."

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Customer Information

Guhring Ltd

Castle Bromwich Business Park, Tameside Drive,

Birmingham, West Midlands. B35 7AG

Telephone: 0121 749 5544

Web: http://www.guhring.co.uk/

Email: info@guhring.co.uk