They could be programmed to keep workers from clocking in (now by magnetic ID card) too early or out too late and thus earning unauthorized overtime. By 1981 Kronos had sales of about $2 million a year, and in 1984, when sales reached $9 million, the company was making a modest profit and was able to move to Waltham from leased quarters in Cambridge near Harvard University's business school.īy mid-1985 Kronos's models had advanced considerably in sophistication. In the fall of 1980, however, the company received $500,000 in venture-capital investment. Business was so poor that on three occasions Ain told his employees not to cash the paychecks he distributed. Kronos's first customer was a small copy shop on Broadway in New York City, so small, Ain recalled to a Boston Globe reporter, "that the only place for the clock was in the restroom." Another early customer, he added, was a frustrated convenience dairy owner in a tough section of Brooklyn who "called and said that he was about to use an ax on 'the clock' or on one of our servicemen" and whose second clock caught on fire. Nevertheless, developing their clock took Ain and Baxter nearly three years instead of the six months they expected, mainly because the software had to accommodate hundreds of different corporate policies on such matters as how overtime was calculated and how late a worker would be permitted to punch in before being docked. By contrast, electronic clocks delivered a total each day, printed on the time card, and could be linked to other computers to total the numbers for the payroll period electronically. The first one in the United States, it sold for under $1,000, compared to about $400 for electromechanical time clocks.Įlectromechanical time clocks, some still in operation after 40 years, recorded only the hour and minute that workers punched in and out, leaving to clerks the tedious and error-prone task of totaling the numbers every week or two. The year 1978 was devoted to funding the endeavor, and the Kronos electronic time clock was introduced in December 1979. In place of the standard electromechanical time clock, used for payroll purposes, Baxter devised an electronic time clock. Ain and his partner considered 150 possible products and narrowed this field to 12 before choosing the time-clock business, which had remained essentially unchanged since 1888. Working out of his home in Newton, Massachusetts, Ain and inventor Larry Baxter had been planning since 1974 to introduce a microprocessor-based product for a technologically backward industry. from the University of Rochester whose work experience consisted of stints at Esso International, Digital Equipment Corp., and a Concord, New Hampshire, consulting firm. Ain, a computer science and engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an M.B.A. Kronos (the Greek word for time) was founded in 1977 by Mark S. Kronos enjoyed uninterrupted revenue growth throughout the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, with profits increasing every year since 1988. The company also maintains an extensive service and support organization for its customers. The integrated hardware and software systems that it engineers, manufactures, and distributes collect and process information designed to increase productivity in the work place. is the leading manufacturer of work place timekeeping systems and also produces similar data-collection systems.
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