Production migration from China to Wales

Control Techniques, the global drives experts now under the umbrella of larger motor manufacturer Nidec, has moved its full production capacity from China to Newton in Wales. This created 44 new jobs in the area.

The plan was supported financially by the Welsh government. The Chinese production facility was itself moved, by road and rail. 1,200 drives are aimed to be made to reach global demand.

Martyn Cray, vice president of operations for Control Techniques, said: “By successfully bringing production of our Commander drives back to Wales, we have proven there is both the expertise and capability to operate a project of this magnitude here in Wales.

“Our in-house operations and supply chain teams worked tirelessly to deliver the project, on time and within budget, and we can now look forward to substantial cost savings along with the creation of new employment here in Newtown.”

A major increase in staff numbers, such as GoDaddy is planning, can cause unforeseen problems for staff performing HR, admin and accounts job roles if the company’s method of recording time worked has not been updated.

For example, it is very easy for staff to fill in paper timesheets incorrectly. Sometimes this can be deliberate time fraud, but sometimes it is just new staff getting confused, or people forgetting to fill in their timesheets until a week later, by which time they’ve forgotten their exact shift details and are likely to just fudge it.

Even if the details are all correct, most paper timesheets must then be manually transferred to a database (usually an Excel spreadsheet) before being sent to payroll software.

There are many opportunities for human error to kick in during this time-consuming process – e.g. making an unrecognised typo in entering, or misreading employee’s handwriting (1 or 7? O or 0 or D?).

Incorrect data can also foul up HR tasks too, making it much more difficult to spot issues like adherence to the Working Time Directive or someone taking three 30 minute breaks plus lunch.

At Time and Attendance Wales, we offer specialised attendance management software which can work either with smartcards or with biometrics.

Our smartcards are about the size of a credit card and fit nicely into most wallets. The Radio Frequency technology means that you don’t need to physically swipe the cards, just hold them up near the reader terminal. This reduces wear and tear.

For the ultimate deterrent against time theft, we can provide a facial recognition scanner or a fingerprint reader terminal. Smartcards can be lost, or swapped with colleagues to input fake times. This isn’t the case with faces and fingerprints