Suprema Inc.

Suprema Inc., a leading global provider of technology in biometrics and security, today announced it provided its fingerprint recognition terminal, BioEntry Plus, to Carrefour Supermarkets in Istanbul, Turkey, for a new system of access control and time & attendance.

A total of 500 units were provided by Meyer Inc, a local partner of Suprema in Turkey. BioEntry Plus is a distributed IP system terminal with the high level security provided by biometrics, which provides higher flexibility and multiple installation options for different environments.

Carrefour Supermarkets in Istanbul made use of the RF (MIFARE) card based terminal and system for access control and time & attendance management. The system, however, was not fully supportive of efficient management of access control and time & attendance for the more than 5,000 employees working at stalls located across the country.

As stalls are scattered in various regions of the nation, the HR division of the company could not accurately check and confirm employees’ time & attendance as well as access control for security. Above all, the company had difficulty in controlling the behavior of employees such as ‘Buddy Punching’, which employees frequently practiced by card sharing. The card duplication was not only a matter of time & attendance but also a serious issue for security as RF cards can be easily duplicated and used by unauthorized persons. Additionally, the company needed to improve management and administration efficiency and productivity because of the frequent issuance of cards due to employee loss.

The company tried to change from a system based on RF card to a fingerprint based system in order to meet the challenges and improve efficiency and productivity in administration. Therefore, it undertook a system integration project to build up a new environment/system for access control and time & attendance management. A key to the project was the selection of the optimal product for fingerprint terminals, and so an evaluation comparison of various products available in the market. As a result of this evaluation, Carrefour finally decided to select BioEntry Plus, however, as it was evaluated to be superior in performance based on Carrefour’s criterion. “We concluded that Suprema products guarantee the most powerful performance with matching algorithms featuring high verification rates and verification speeds.” explained Carrefour.

“We’re very pleased to provide our products to Carrefour, a global leader in the global retail industry.” Said Young S. Moon, Vice President of Suprema Inc. “Though the project is specifically for the supermarkets in Istanbul this time, we expect it will be a momentum to bring more opportunities of business expansion for partnership with Carrefour Group internationally in the future.”