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Eaton Transforms APAC Workforce Management, Saving 16,000 Hours Annually with GaiaWorks

Eaton Transforms APAC Workforce Management, Saving 16,000 Hours Annually with GaiaWorks

Global power management giant Eaton automated complex, localized HR rules across its diverse APAC operations, streamlining core processes and empowering its HR teams for strategic work with the GaiaWorks WFM platform.

Results at a Glance

  • Significant Efficiency Gains: Saved thousands of administrative hours annually, fundamentally optimizing regional workforce processes.
  • Strategic HR Focus: Freed HR teams, attendance clerks, and managers from high-volume manual data processing to focus on high-value strategic work.
  • Complex Localization Mastered: Successfully automated highly complex, localized rules, including 30+ unique overtime types in the Philippines and 8 distinct employee types in Taiwan.
  • Superior User Experience: Delivered a transformative process optimization, moving over 10,000 employees to a self-service, real-time, and efficient mobile experience.
  • Scalable APAC Blueprint: Established a unified, scalable WFM platform successfully deployed in China, the Philippines, and Taiwan, creating a blueprint for further regional expansion.

“This wasn’t just a system swap; we optimized the entire process. The GaiaWorks system brought great efficiency gains and a simple, efficient user experience to our employees, clerks, and HR team.”——— Director, HR Service Center, Eaton APAC

The Challenge: The Scale of Complexity in a Diverse Region

Eaton, a 113-year-old global power management leader, operates a vast network across 13 countries in the APAC region with nearly 20,000 employees.

As the company expanded, its HR teams faced immense operational challenges. The region’s diverse and complex labor laws created significant administrative burdens that its long-serving systems were not designed to handle automatically.

The complexity was a major business challenge:

  • Highly Complex Labor Laws: Each country presented unique compliance challenges. The Philippines, for example, has 18 types of public holidays (which can be changed by presidential decree) and over 30 different overtime calculation rules.
  • Diverse Workforce Needs: Operations varied significantly. Taiwan alone has 8 distinct employee types (including factory, office, and sales staff), each with unique attendance and scheduling rules.
  • Opportunities for Process Optimization: Manual processing for attendance, scheduling, and leave management was time-consuming for HR, managers, and employees alike, creating risks of data error and compliance issues.

Eaton needed a unified platform powerful enough to automate this extreme complexity and flexible enough to deliver a modern, mobile-first experience.

The Solution: A Unified WFM Engine Powered by GaiaWorks

Eaton’s APAC HR Service Center led a strategic initiative focused on process optimization. The goal was to re-engineer workflows from the ground up, not just “lift and shift” old functions to a new system.

Eaton selected the GaiaWorks Workforce Management (WFM) suite as its new, unified platform for the APAC region. The solution was configured to:

  1. Automate Complex Rules: The GaiaWorks platform was configured to automate the most difficult local requirements. At a factory in the Philippines, when a worker clocks out at 11:00 PM, the system now instantly applies the correct attendance rules, automatically determining the shift type, holiday status, and correct multiplier from over 30 possible types.
  2. Drive Process Efficiency: The system automated key areas by optimizing workflows (eliminating manual verifications), automating calculations (like leave quotas), and mobilizing approvals via the mobile app, drastically cutting process wait times.
  3. Unify Diverse Operations: The platform successfully managed the deep contrasts in Eaton’s operations, applying the correct, different rule sets for factory workers in Tainan and office staff in Taipei, all within one system.

The Results: A Transformative Leap in Efficiency and Experience

The impact of the GaiaWorks platform was both immediate and profound, establishing a new benchmark for Eaton’s digital transformation in the region.

1. Significant Efficiency Gains

The project’s primary success was the saving of thousands of administrative hours annually. This reclaimed time was a major strategic victory, allowing attendance clerks, supervisors, and HR teams to move from low-value data entry to high-value employee engagement and business support.

2. A Transformative Leap in User Experience

For over 10,000 employees, the system delivered a major upgrade.

  • Empowerment & Privacy: Employees gained self-service access to their data and could manage sensitive leave requests privately.
  • Modern Communication: Critical information moved from physical bulletin boards to precise, instant mobile push notifications.
  • High User Adoption: The new system was met with enthusiasm. The local team in the Philippines was so pleased that they recorded testimonial videos and handed out commemorative badges on launch day.

3. From a Regional Tool to a Global Benchmark

By conquering the immense complexity of APAC’s labor laws, the Eaton-GaiaWorks project has become a milestone in the company’s regional operations. It proved that a single WFM platform can drive efficiency, ensure compliance, and dramatically improve the employee experience across a diverse landscape.

Struggling with complex APAC labor laws and inefficient processes? Talk to our team to see how GaiaWorks can unify your operation.

 

 

Smart Scheduling for Manufacturing: Swire Coca-Cola Case Study

Smart Scheduling for Manufacturing: Swire Coca-Cola Case Study

Swire Coca-Cola deployed smart scheduling for manufacturing to solve its most complex labor challenge: automating multi-line, skilled-labor schedules. The GaiaWorks platform helped them meet peak season demand and boost efficiency—all without adding new staff.

 

Results at a Glance

 

  • Scheduling Time Slashed 97%: Reduced weekly scheduling time for complex multi-line operations from 4-6 hours to just 10 minutes.
  • Scaled Labor Sharing: Expanded the strategic “labor sharing” program from just 2 production lines to all 6 lines, unlocking new capacity.
  • Achieved 100% Accuracy: Ensured all schedules were 100% compliant with complex skills, rotations, and multi-layered labor rules.
  • Met Peak Demand Without New Hires: Increased production flexibility to manage seasonal peaks and boosted overall capacity using the existing skilled workforce.
  • Enhanced Employee Development: Enabled a transparent, multi-skilling framework and clear development paths, boosting employee satisfaction.

“Management philosophy and our foundational principles helped us get from 0 to 1. Smart scheduling (with GaiaWorks) helped us get from 1 to 10.”

The Challenge: The New Labor Problem in an Automated Factory

 

In the age of automation, many assume workforce management problems disappear. Swire Coca-Cola’s advanced facility shows this isn’t true. The facility’s operation relies on a smaller, elite group of highly-skilled technicians, which creates two critical business challenges:

1. Peak Season Demand: The beverage business is highly seasonal. This creates intense peak seasons where the factory must produce more.

2. Skilled Labor Scarcity: The required technicians are difficult to find and train. The factory cannot simply hire temporary staff to meet peak demand.

The strategic answer was internal “labor sharing”—borrowing skilled staff from less-busy lines to support high-demand lines.

This created the real challenge: Extreme Scheduling Complexity.

  • Intricate Rules: The factory runs a “3-shift, 2-rotation” system.
  • Skill Matching: Planners must match the precise skill and proficiency level for each borrowed employee.
  • Layered Constraints: The schedule must obey dozens of prioritized “strong” and “non-strong” rules (e.g., skill limits, hour limits, overtime caps, consecutive rest preferences, etc.).

This complexity made the strategy impossible to scale. Manually creating a schedule for just two lines took 4-6 hours per week and was still not 100% accurate.

 

The Solution: GaiaWorks’ Smart Scheduling for Manufacturing in Action

 

Swire Coca-Cola had the right management philosophy but needed a technology engine to execute it. They launched the GaiaWorks Smart Scheduling module to automate their “labor sharing” initiative.

This smart scheduling for manufacturing solution was configured to:

1. Automate All Rules: The system digitized all of Swire Coca-Cola’s complex rules—from “strong” constraints like skill matching to “non-strong” preferences like minimizing disruptions.

2. Optimize Shared Labor: The engine automatically finds the optimal, 100% compliant schedule, identifying which employees to borrow from which lines based on availability, skills, and business priority.

3. Manage Skills: The solution provided a digital “skill tag” management system, giving planners instant visibility into who was qualified for which role.

 

The Results: Scaling from “Impossible” to “Effortless”

 

The impact of the GaiaWorks platform was transformative, allowing Swire Coca-Cola to finally scale its core labor strategy.

1. Immediate Efficiency & Accuracy

The 4-6 hour manual scheduling nightmare vanished. The process now takes 10 minutes, and the resulting schedule is 100% accurate and compliant.

 

2. Strategic Scalability (The “1 to 10” Leap)

With automation, Swire Coca-Cola expanded its “labor sharing” program from the initial 2 lines to all 6 production lines.

 

3. Capacity & Cost Control

By efficiently sharing its existing skilled workforce, the factory boosted its overall production capacity and met peak seasonal demand without hiring a single new employee.

 

4. Enhanced Employee Experience

The platform provided a clear, online system for managing skills, allowing employees to pursue new development paths and increasing their satisfaction and retention.

 

Struggling with complex schedules? See how GaiaWorks’ smart scheduling for manufacturing can automate your operations.

 

 

Alfa Laval Transforms Workforce Management with GaiaWorks, Slashing T&A Processing by 70% and Fueling ESG Goals

Alfa Laval Transforms Workforce Management with GaiaWorks, Slashing T&A Processing by 70% and Fueling ESG Goals

The global industrial leader consolidated 9 disparate systems into one unified GaiaWorks platform, saving 6.1 FTEs and cutting 7,582 kg of carbon emissions annually.

Results at a Glance

 

  • System Integration: 9 fragmented HR systems consolidated into 1 unified GaiaWorks platform.
  • Efficiency Gains: Time & Attendance (T&A) processing time slashed from 1,504 to 449 hours (a 70% reduction).
  • Manpower Savings: Reduced workload equivalent to 6.1 FTEs.
  • ROI & ESG: E-signature module saves 6,286 hours and ~20,000 RMB annually, eliminating 7,582 kg of carbon emissions.
  • Compliance & UX: Proactive compliance issues reduced from 8 to 2, while employee user satisfaction surged to 4.5/5.

“With GaiaWorks, we consolidated 9 systems into one. Our T&A processing time fell by 70%, and our e-signature module alone saved us over 6,200 hours. We didn’t just gain efficiency; we improved compliance, sustainability, and boosted user satisfaction to 4.5 out of 5.”

— Wang Hui, Head of HR SSC & Country HR Manager, Alfa Laval China

The Challenge: Fragmented Systems and Poor Workforce Management

 

Alfa Laval is a 140-year-old Swedish industrial giant. The company operates globally with a deep-rooted commitment to sustainability. However, in China, this vision was being challenged by operational reality.

Its China operations were running in silos. For example, the HR department used nine different, disconnected systems for time & attendance, scheduling, leave, travel, and payroll.

This fragmented approach to workforce management created significant business challenges:

  • No Visibility: Management had no unified view of frontline operations, making it impossible to share resources (like specialized welders) between plants, leading to redundant hiring.
  • High Inefficiency: Manual, paper-based approval processes were slow and opaque. Employees couldn’t even check their own leave balances accurately without asking HR.
  • Data & Compliance Risk: Data was entered multiple times across systems, leading to high error rates and significant compliance risks.

This operational chaos was unacceptable to Wang Hui, Head of Alfa Laval China’s HR Shared Service Center (HRSSC). Her team, operating as a “Problem Solving Center”. Therefore, they knew that transformation was necessary to align operations with the company’s core values of efficiency and sustainability.

 

The Solution: A New Workforce Management Process Powered by GaiaWorks

 

The transformation was not just about technology; it was about process. Before implementation, Wang Hui’s team led a 10-month “process re-engineering battle.”

They mapped and standardized workflows for all 3,000 employees. This resulted in 19 master processes, 12 approval matrices, and 40 sub-policies.

With this new foundation, Alfa Laval selected and implemented the GaiaWorks Workforce Management (WFM) suite as its single, unified platform. The GaiaWorks system was configured to:

  • Unify Operations: Consolidate all T&A, scheduling, and leave management for all Chinese sites.
  • Handle Complexity: Automate complex rules, such as cross-day night shift calculations and plant-specific overtime policies.
  • Standardize Approvals: Enforce new, standardized approval flows, pushing the organization toward best practices.

Concurrently, the team built a comprehensive HR Knowledge Base. This creates a “single source of truth” for all process-related questions, and proved invaluable for future change management.

 

The Results: A New Workforce Management Engine for Efficiency and Sustainability

 

The impact of the GaiaWorks workforce management platform was immediate and measurable. It delivered transformative results across the board.

1.Massive Efficiency Gains: The most dramatic impact was on efficiency. By automating T&A processing, the team slashed processing time by 70% (from 1,504 to 449 hours). This saved the equivalent of 6.1 FTEs, allowing the HRSSC to focus on high-value strategic work instead of manual data entry.

2.Hard Savings & ESG Impact: The new e-signature module alone saves 6,286 administrative hours per year. This initiative, which saves nearly 20,000 RMB in material costs, was also calculated as a 7,582 kg reduction in carbon emissions, contributing directly to Alfa Laval’s global “Go Green” targets.

3.Stronger Governance & Compliance: The unified system provided unprecedented transparency. The number of compliance issues flagged during audits dropped from 7-8 to just 2 (with the remaining two being HQ-level issues).

4.Superior User Experience: With a single, accurate platform, employee user satisfaction surged to 4.5 out of 5. Trust in the company increased as policies became transparent and data became reliable.

For Alfa Laval, the GaiaWorks platform became the engine that finally connected its day-to-day operations with its long-term strategic goals, proving that digital transformation and sustainability are two sides of the same coin.

Learn more about GaiaWorks’ workforce management solutions for manufacturing here.