Q›TAR Solutions

Q›TAR Equipment

Contact P&Q

To contact a P&Q advisor for more information on any topic, please call:
0845 1300 707

or send us an email with your enquiry:

What our clients say ...

Capita plc Financial, Insurance and Business Management Services

“Q>TAR has been in place for over twenty five years and has been used as our time recording system for monitoring staff attendance, sickness and holidays. The data captured has been instrumental in ensuring there has been sufficient oversight of the company's staff utilisation across its operation.
During this time, there have been minimal issues with the software in terms of reliability and ease of data access. The hardware, as it has aged, has shown an expected level of reliability, with any fix on fail requirements dealt with efficiently under the annual maintenance agreement.
All in all, the use of Q>TAR has continuously satisfied the needs of the company, and the service provided by P & Q International has been very satisfactory.”
(Tim Sill of Capita plc)

Cadbury (Ireland) (Manufacturer of Confectionery products)

“We employ approximately 1400 employees between two plants in Ireland. We have been using QTAR since 1987 and operate it in both these plants. Our shift patterns are very variable. The staff at P&Q are always very helpful.”
(Catherine Murphy of Cadbury (Ireland))

Monarch Aircraft Engineering (Aircraft servicing & repairs)
P&Q client: Monarch Aircraft Engineering

“We installed QTAR in 1991. It revolutionised our whole system of doing the payroll. QTAR is reliable and flexible and P&Q are always ready to help, they respond very fast.”
(Pat Thomas of Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd)

Goodyear Dunlop (world's largest tyre manufacturer)

“At the Wolverhampton site, the rules for calculating employees' gross pay are incredibly complicated, depending on a multitude of factors such as the type of work, when they are working compared with their normal shift, the reason for the overtime or shift swap and even how dirty the work is! So QTAR has to be used to calculate the gross pay for each period of work. The supervisors approve and record reasons for overtime, shift swaps and absences during the shift, directly into the system, which has streamlined the process enormously.”
(Audrey Woolvin of Goodyear Dunlop)

Caparo Precision Tubes (Manufacturer of Steel tubing)
P&Q client: Caparo Precision Tubes

“We first installed QTAR in 1991. We have found QTAR extremely flexible - it can do anything you require of it. Day-to-day operations are simple. It rarely goes wrong or gives us trouble. The Support team is well-informed and comprehensive. P & Q have kept their focus squarely on T & A - they simply have to be good at it.”
(Bob Sharratt of Caparo Tubing)

Crown Cork and Seal (International packaging company)
P&Q client: Crown Cork and Seal

“We've had QTAR installed for quite a few years, and we find it to be a good program. P&Q are very friendly and helpful. If I have a problem or question they are always ready to assist me.”
(Christine Wathan of Crown Cork and Seal)

Unisys Insurance Services (Administering Life Insurance schemes)
P&Q client: Unisys Insurance Services

“We have been using QTAR since 1991. We have a flexitime system with complex flexible working time requirements. It is largely self-administered (within the rules configured into the system) by the 1,500 employees. A competing system was installed and then rejected, since it was unable to cope with our requirements.”
(Julie Coldridge of Abbey Life)

TMD Friction (Manufacturer of Brake friction components)
P&Q client: TMD Friction

“Our shift patterns are complex – 5-day, 7-day, morning, afternoon, nights and rotating, and we also have people on fixed salaries. QTAR handles these fine. When we upgraded QTAR just before Christmas, that went very smoothly.”
(P. A. Rothwell of TMD Friction)

Kraft Suchard (Manufacturer of Chocolate and confectionery)
P&Q client: Kraft Suchard

“We have a workforce of about 850 and have used QTAR since 1992 to keep track of shift work, contractor hours and salaried personnel for payroll. We also rely on QTAR in our costing processes, to authorise overtime, book employee holidays, report excessive unauthorised absences, etc.”
(Martin Buckle of Kraft Suchard)

LEONI Wiring Systems (Manufacturer of Lucas brand electronic vehicle parts)
P&Q client: LEONI Wiring Systems

“We originally purchased QTAR in 1990 purely for payroll management, with up to 3000 individuals on the system. We found that using the system was simple, with a lot of standard reports included. But when we realised how QTAR could be expanded, we had extra ones written for reporting things like absenteeism in different ways that suited our requirements better. P&Q staff give good support and are easy to talk to, even if you aren't very familiar with computers.”
(Stella Pepper of LEONI)

British American Tobacco (Tobacco manufacturer)
P&Q client: British American Tobacco

“The QTAR system has been in our factory since 1986 and has been very stable with few issues. P&Q support has been reliable and efficient. The application has outlived a number of HR system transitions, and migration of interfaces has not been problematic. A number of custom modules have been designed to meet our special needs, including absence and overtime reporting.”
(Hans Commandeur at BAT)

MBM Produce (Foodstuffs)
P&Q client: MBM Produce

“We have been using the QTAR system about 16 years. It works well. It's hard to make set rules about this kind of factory. Work patterns change often. People work very variable hours. Sometimes they make time up when they need to come in late. I find it easy to go into the system and override it. We upgraded a few years ago, and we found P&Q very helpful. They are happy to talk me through any problems I may come across.”
(Jenny Hawkins of MBM Produce:)

Dunlop Oil & Marine (Manufacturer of Industrial hosing)
P&Q client: Dunlop Oil & Marine

“Dunlop Oil & Marine has been using QTAR since 1984. We have had no trouble with the system in all that time. Because P&Q concentrate on T&A, the system works perfectly.”
(Sue Thomas of Dunlop Oil & Marine)

Some P&Q clients (from UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Africa, etc)
Some P&Q clients:

Q›TAR Timber Stock Identification and Location

Timber Stock Identification & Location

Keeping track of timber packs whose location keeps changing

Timber Yard – aerial view

In an environment such as a busy port or timber yard, packs of timber that have been unloaded, manufactured or processed are constantly moved about in order to access other packs and to make space for new packs arriving. It then becomes a very time-consuming task trying to find a particular pack – it can easily take 10-15 minutes or even an hour or more.

Q›TAR makes the packs easy to find and ensures that the right packs are loaded for despatch. Enormous cost savings are achieved by eliminating time wasted looking for specific packs and by avoiding delivery of the wrong ones. Less time wasted means more can be handled – with consequent increased turnover and profitability.

Finding Packs

Using low-cost passive RFID tags that can be read from over 5 metres away, pack locations are recorded, updated and verified automatically via vehicle-mounted readers, as the side-loaders drive around locating, picking up and moving packs. The current location of the most easily accessible pack of any required pack-type can be displayed immediately, thus enabling the driver to go directly to the most efficient location, saving significant time on every pack pick-up.

As well as a driver being able to locate a particular pack by its pack number, Q›TAR can automatically use data from multiple load-sheets (from your existing timber system) to direct drivers to pick up packs from a given area in the most efficient order, and deliver them to the right truck/trailer, thus enabling efficiencies that cannot be achieved by each driver handling only one load-sheet at a time.

Checking the Load

RFID Antenna

When a truck/trailer has been loaded and is ready to leave the premises, a fixed RFID reader with 2 strategically placed antennae (one each side of the vehicle) can verify that all of the packs that should have been loaded are actually on the vehicle, and that no packs have been wrongly loaded. The system can then automatically allow or prevent opening of the barrier for the vehicleto leave the premises.

Just-in-time Traceability

When you need full traceability of the timber packs, but either recording every pack's details when you receive a shipment is not practical, and/or where your timber system allocates a random specific pack out of many identical timber packs, Q›TAR automates recording the correct pack details as the timber packs leave the yard. It can normally interface with your existing system, to record (or substitute) the exact pack number shipped.

Central Overview

Q›TAR's central view of all packs and of all stock movements enables you to immediately view (for example) what has been shipped today, what is currently in each location, which trucks/trailers are loaded and ready for departure, and driver and site statistics – all in real time. You can then decide who best to allocate special jobs to, how best to relocate packs to clear space for a new shipment, and generally improve the efficiency of your operations.

Automated Stock-takes

Rather than having to spend several man-days carrying out a stock-take the traditional way, Q›TAR enables a single person to carry out a stock-take of the whole site in just the time it takes to drive or walk past all the packs on site!

Equipment

Handheld Mobile Computer with RFID and Barcode scanners

Rugged Vehicle-Mount Computer

Each timber pack is tagged with a very low cost UHF RFID tag (ISO18000-6C) that can be read from 6m to 12m away. Small rugged vehicle-mounted WinCE computers with attached RFID readers and antennae are mounted on each side loader and fork hoist. Hand-held mobile WinCE computers with a built-in RFID reader and barcode scanner can also be used.

Long-Range Passive RFID Tag

When the RFID tag is attached to the pack, if you already have a barcode label fixed to the pack and that therefore identifies the pack, you can use the barcode scanner built into the hand-held computer/RFID reader to match up the RFID tag with the barcode, and hence with the correct record in the database. Alternatively, if you issue your own labels, the RFID tag can be attached to the label in advance, and a desk-mounted RFID reader/encoder used to match the RFID tag to the pack.

The Pay-off

Banknotes

The pay-off comes in the huge amount of time saved, but there are several additional cost savings and benefits:

Driving directly to an item, instead of spending probably over 15 minutes on average looking for it, means huge cost savings.
Less time wasted means that higher throughput can be handled with the same number of forklifts and drivers.
Sending the wrong item to the other side of the country (or the world) is very expensive – this system virtually eliminates such errors.
The operations manager can see in real time what his loader drivers are doing, what is stored in each area, locate a specific item (e.g. to see if it is still in the yard), what items have been moved recently, which trailers have been loaded and checked but are still in a loading bay, site and driver statistics, and so forth.
If the operations manager wants a particular fork-lift driver to load a specific truck or trailer, he can send the load sheet directly to the driver's computer instead of the driver having to drive perhaps a mile or two (in a large port) to pick up the load sheet.
When a truck/trailer has been loaded, a delivery note can be automatically printed in the security office, ready for the driver by the time he reaches the front gate.
Because the system can operate over a Wide Area Network, a company with many branches can monitor and control yards scattered over the country – or anywhere in the world.

Any one of the above cost-savings would easily pay for a system within a few months.

Further Information

To find out more about how Q›TAR can help you simultaneously increase throughput and turnover, save money, capital and manpower, and increase your profitability, please call us on 0845 1300 707 (or +44 1920 822 800), or email a P&Q Advisor now.

Timber sawmill