Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies today announced that the Associated Students at California State University, Chico (AS) uses seven Schlage HandPunch time and attendance readers at employee entrances throughout the student union and dining facilities to track the attendance of approximately 1,200 student and career employees. Readers are used at the student union, student services on campus, dining and food services. The AS is an independent student-directed corporation that provides a wide range of services and programs for Chico State students, faculty, staff and alumni. It is the largest employer of students on the Chico State campus.
“Some of the employees had become very clever in the way that they had friends clock in and out for them,” explains Matt Norby, IT director for the AS. “Some of these areas were high volume, which made it quite difficult for the manager to track such ‘buddy-punching.’ As a result, we decided to use hand geometry readers to track time and attendance reporting.”
Hand geometry readers continue to be the dominant biometric technology for access control and time and attendance applications. They are used in more biometric time and attendance systems than all fingerprint and facial systems combined. Over 6 million people throughout the world clock in and out of work with a hand geometry reader.
For time/attendance/payroll use, AS employees use the keypad on the HandPunch reader to enter their ID number and then place their hand in the hand reader. The reader simultaneously analyzes more than 31,000 points of the hand’s length, width, thickness and surface area to instantaneously record more than 90 separate measurements and verify users.
“Being so used to computers and other electronic gear, the student employees accepted the hand readers without question,” adds Norby. “Only a small group held the inaccurate perception that biometric information could be stored for law enforcement or the government. When we explained that only a mathematical equation, an algorithm, created from the 90 points was stored in the hand reader, they were satisfied.”
At Chico, the HandPunch reader connects with TimeCentre software which feeds into the AS internal payroll system SunGuard Integrated Financial and Administrative Solution or IFAS, a financial and personnel management system designed for government, education and other not-for-profit entities.
For more information on hand geometry, interested parties can go to www.biometrics.schlage.com.
Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies June 2009 press release.
