Smarter global workforce management and payroll for industrial manufacturing
Transform complexity into control with KPMG and UKG
Industrial manufacturers are rethinking how they manage labor, payroll, and compliance at scale. Labor has become one of the largest and least transparent drivers of operational cost across manufacturing organizations, yet workforce data often remains fragmented across plants, payroll systems, and scheduling platforms. Without a unified foundation for workforce management and payroll, leaders struggle to see the relationship between labor cost, productivity, compliance risk, and plant performance.
KPMG and UKG bring together deep industrial manufacturing knowledge with leading workforce management and payroll technology experience to help organizations gain visibility, improve productivity, and reduce risk—globally. This is not about point solutions. It’s about business-led, outcome driven transformation designed for the realities of modern manufacturing.
The manufacturing workforce challenge: when workforce complexity outpaces visibility
Manufacturing leaders increasingly ask:
- Why are labor costs rising even when production volumes remain stable?
- Why do plant managers still rely on spreadsheets to manage schedules and overtime?
- Why do payroll discrepancies and compliance issues still surface late in the payroll cycle?
- Why is it so difficult to see workforce performance and labor cost across plants, shifts, and regions?
These questions point to a deeper challenge: workforce management, time capture, and payroll often operate across disconnected systems that were never designed to work together at enterprise scale.
Manufacturers are facing unprecedented labor pressure:
- Rising wages and benefits outpacing productivity
- Aging and shrinking labor pools alongside shifting skill requirements
- Record absenteeism and turnover impacting throughput and safety
- Multiple payrolls, union agreements, and regional wage regulations
- Fragmented legacy systems and manual processes
- Increased compliance exposure and payroll leakage
When global workforce management and payroll operate in silos, these challenges multiply. Labor cost data becomes difficult to reconcile across plants and business units. Managers spend valuable time correcting time records, resolving payroll discrepancies, and interpreting inconsistent labor reports instead of focusing on production performance and workforce productivity. Over time, this lack of visibility creates payroll leakage, compliance exposure, and missed opportunities to optimize labor allocation across operations.
Dive into our thinking:
Download the brochure to explore KPMG and UKG’s perspective on transforming workforce management and payroll for industrial manufacturing.
Download nowWhy KPMG & UKG: A partnership built for manufacturing complexity
Many workforce management initiatives focus narrowly on deploying new software. Industrial manufacturers know the challenge runs deeper. Workforce policies, union rules, plant scheduling practices, payroll structures, and ERP environments must align to support operational performance. Without operational design, governance, and workforce analytics, new systems can simply replicate the same fragmentation in a different platform.
KPMG understands the operational and financial realities of industrial manufacturing—from the plant floor to the CFO’s office. We advise the largest global manufacturers through workforce and payroll transformations. We understand that for our manufacturing clients, it is M&A activity, ERP transformation, product-line & operational manufacturing transformation that drive complexity and continuous improvement.
UKG is a market leader in enterprise global workforce management and payroll technology, purpose built to support complex labor environments with varying pay rules, unions, shifts, and regulatory requirements.
Together, KPMG and UKG help manufacturers:
Modern Workforce Management for Industrial Manufacturers | KPMG & UKG
A smarter future for global workforce management and payroll in industrial manufacturing
For industrial manufacturers, workforce management and payroll systems connect labor scheduling, time capture, payroll execution, and workforce analytics across plants and regions. When these capabilities operate on a single platform, leaders gain clearer visibility into labor cost, workforce productivity, and compliance across their operations.
The objective is not simply to modernize payroll systems. It is to create a unified workforce intelligence foundation that connects labor planning, time capture, payroll execution, and workforce analytics. When these capabilities operate together, manufacturers gain a clearer understanding of labor cost drivers, workforce productivity, and compliance exposure across plants, shifts, and geographies.
With KPMG and UKG, manufacturers can replace fragmented systems with a centralized, intelligent workforce and payroll platform that enables:
- Real‑time labor cost allocation across plants, jobs, and work orders
- Predictive workforce planning, scheduling, and forecasting
- Integrated time and payroll data, from time to gross through gross to net to gross through gross to net
- Automation and AI enabled insights that reduce manual effort and errors enabled insights
- Built in compliance and governance across geographies in compliance and governance
- Improved employee and manager experience through transparency and self service
Backed by KPMG’s outcome led approach and UKG’s world class technology—from assessment and roadmap through implementation and continuous improvement, this is more than a system upgrade. It’s a foundation for sustained productivity, cost control, and workforce agility led approach.
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Read moreWhy workforce management and payroll are critical for industrial manufacturers
Modern manufacturing operations require clear visibility into labor availability, labor cost, and workforce productivity. When workforce management, time capture, and payroll operate on disconnected systems, organizations struggle to:
- Understand the true cost of labor across plants and production lines
- Align workforce scheduling with production demand
- Prevent payroll errors, leakage, and compliance risk
- Optimize workforce utilization across shifts and locations
Integrated workforce management and payroll platforms create a single source of truth for labor data—enabling better operational decisions, stronger compliance, and improved workforce experience.
Elevate your workforce management with KPMG and UKG
Unleash the potential of your payroll and HCM functions through innovative, people-focused process transformations
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