Material supply in the production line
Provide material supply with RFID technology
In the automotive industry, providing a constant and reliable material supply in production is always a great challenge to logistics. The traditional method in maintaining a safe level of material supply in production is stockpiling a “comfortingly” large stock, which entails a painful amount of costs. Because of this, new ways must be explored in modern logistics processes which ensure a steady material supply in production by reducing stocks and service time through adequate organizational methods instead of expanding stocks. The amount of stock in production can be greatly reduced as a result.
Besides applying adequate organizational measures, creating an advanced informatics infrastructure is also essential, which would provide adequate feedback and the information necessary for the operation of the system.
What are the key tasks of such an IT system?
- Material warehouse management
- Bundle management
- Application of various storage and handling methods
Picking list management - Scheduled fulfillment of individual material needs
- Creating technical units
- Cyclic material delivery
- Ensuring traceability
- Interface towards other systems
- Application of modern online automatic data collection technologies
Our partner, the logistics provider of an automotive manufacturing plant operating in Western Hungary, contacted Vonalkód Rendszerház for the creation of a system covering all the processes of a raw material warehouse that ensures the fulfillment of constant, or even immediate, material requests. The answer to these questions was the introduction of the appropriate modules of the LOG4Pro production logistics system at our partner as well as the customization of the system to cater for individual needs.
During the introduction of LOG4Pro, current processes were audited and together with our partner we designed the changes required to increase efficiency. The next step was to determine the most efficient automatic identification technologies with regards to the processes. In some areas barcode was selected, while in other areas, where greater automation was needed to ensure efficiency, we selected RFID. A network of online industrial terminals was established to manage warehouse processes.
To ensure ease-of-use and easy maintenance, users at the workstations can access the system via a modern web interface. The high number of industrial terminals required the introduction of a separate application, the SOTI mobile device management system application, to ensure the efficient operation of the terminals.
Besides a sufficiently thorough planning phase, fine tuning became necessary during the customization on more than one occasion due to the complexity of the system (management of 1-1.5 million individually identified logistics units). These were managed by applying the modern communication techniques used during the project, which were successfully used by the project members, therefore the needs that arose during the implementation did not increase the project costs substantially.