SDC Trailers is one of the largest trailer manufacturers in Europe. With continued investment, SDC has four modern and efficient manufacturing facilities that enables us to offer customers direct control over the entire manufacturing process.
SDC have been a customer of North Time & Data since 2004 when we had the North Time Pro 5 software installed. At that time we utilised mag stripe card technology for staff to register attendance. Since the early days of using the system we have been through a number of software upgrades over the years. Our staff have always been impressed with the functionality of the system along with the new feature developments and improvements. The staff always find it easy to navigate around the new software following an upgrade due to the consistent user interface across all upgrades.
In 2017 following the latest software upgrade, we also took the opportunity to invest in new state of the art biometric attendance terminals. Due to the diverse manufacturer operations, fingerprint recognition technology was not going to be the perfect solution for SDC. For this reason, they decided to implement facial recognition technology. With no requirement for touching the terminal and no issues with fingerprint quality, facial recognition was the ideal solution.
Robert Patton, IT Manager at SDC noted ”The seamless integration of the facial recognition technology and level of onsite and remote support provide by NTD made the migration to the new terminals extremely straight forward. The attendance terminals were so successful that we have now integrated our access control system to the North Time Pro software.”
Staff now use the same face or fingerprint template to pass through access control doors. The software manages the security side of the system and controls which employees are permitted through the required doors.
Due to the high volume of staff present on each site required an intelligent and robust method for detailing all staff that are present onsite in the event of an evacuation. As all staff register attendance when on site, North Time Pro was the obvious avenue to get this information. SDC implemented a Fire Control terminal at each of their UK sites. This terminal integrates with the Fire Panel onsite and in the event of an evacuation the signal received to the main fire panel is relayed to the North Time Pro fire control terminal and a report is either printed or automatically emailed to all relevant fire wardens within the offices and factories.
Robbie added ” The fire control terminal has allowed us to close a potential security risk and is an accurate listing of employees currently onsite in the event of an evacuation. We no longer have to take worst case scenario and guess which staff are onsite and those that are not.”
We have been a customer of NTD for over a decade and this is mainly due to the continued development of the product to fit in with the ever changing requirements of a modern manufacturing company. This coupled with the excellent level customer service and support means we look forward to working with the team at NTD for many years to come.
Robbie Patton
IT Manager, SDC Trailers
