Case Studies

Large Asian Manufacturing Company

1. Company Background
A leading Asian manufacturer which owns several oil refineries and processing plants. The company is vertically integrated, producing oil products in bulk, steel drums and consumer packs for the local and international markets.

2. Business Problem
The company runs a number of expensive manufacturing lines, and would like to improve the management of spare parts to reduce downtime and improve productivity. They identified the following issues:

It was taking too long to get the correct spare part from the parts store to the manufacturing line.
Stock inaccuracies sometimes meant that spare parts were not available or were identified in error.
Stock checks were taking far too long.

They decided they should find a fast yet low cost way of counting, locating and authorising spare parts movements suitable for an industrialised environment.

3. Approach
The company wanted to deploy a serial number tracking solution and to measure the increase in manufacturing line uptime, the improvement in stock accuracy, reducing safety stock and the reduction in time taken to count stock. They also wanted to integrate the information with their SAP legacy ERP system.

4. Solution
The company deployed a solution provided by Cambridge UK based RedBite Solutions; a provider of easy to customise standards based track and trace solutions. The RedBite solution included:

RedBox which is an application server with appropriate middleware
RedAsset which is a customisable asset management software solution running on the RedBox
Fixed RFID readers for each entrance to the spare parts store
GPRS and Wi-Fi enabled handheld RFID reader for stock checking
Low cost reusable EPC Gen2 tags

The solution provides real time alerts to ensure correct parts movement and integrates with the legacy SAP ERP system; it also enables the company to generate a variety of reports on stock usage and movement.

5. Results
The deployment was a success with stock check times reduced from 3 days to 2 hours and the location of spare parts reduced from an average of 2 1/2 hours per week to an average of 20 minutes a week. There were a number of other significant benefits:

Due to the serialised nature of the solution, the company is now able to implement FIFO and to better manage parts warranty as an accurate history was now available for each item. The result was a significant reduction in annual stock write offs.
The company saved four hours of labour each day through the automatic updating of parts movement documentation.
Overall stock accuracy improved from 95% to 99% enabling them to reduce overall stock holding.

International Consumer Electronics Company

1. Company Background
A leading consumer electronics company with a wide range of business interests and one of the world’s leading electronics manufacturers. Its European business has a supply chain that includes a number of manufacturing plants, many of its own and third party warehouses and many of its own retail stores.

2. Business Problem
The company is constantly striving to reduce supply chain costs and improve customer service. It has, for many years, used serial number based barcodes to provide product traceability in its inbound and outbound shipping process, its warranty management process and its product recall process. However, this manual process was too expensive, too slow and prone to errors in accuracy. It therefore wished to automate serial number capturing and tracking using RFID.

3. Approach
The company wanted to use an RFID based serial number tracking from factory, via its own and third party warehouses and retail stores. They wanted however to minimise risk and take a step-by-step approach by introducing and measuring RFID based tracking in each stage of the process. It was important however that the information captured could be fully integrated with their legacy ERP systems, that manual input was still possible and that the company’s existing data structures could be accommodated.

4. Solution
The company deployed a solution provided by RedBite Solutions; a provider of easy to customise standards based track and trace solutions. The RedBite solution included:

A number of RedBoxes (an application server with appropriate middleware) – one per site.
RedLog (a customisable logistics management software solution running on the RedBox)
A number of fixed RFID readers (housed in a rugged portal suitable for the environment)
Use of an appropriate EPCIS and Discovery Service.
Low cost tags

The RedBoxes communicate with each other to provide two-way shipping and receiving communication. RedBite implemented the solution in a number of phases initially linking one of the company’s largest manufacturing plants to its largest European warehouse and then linking the warehouse to one of its flagship retail stores. Integration to the company’s legacy ERP system took place at the company’s European data centre. The final piece in the jigsaw was to link the manufacturing plant to a warehouse operated by an outsourced third party logistics provider.

5. Results
The deployment was a success with serialised item tracking from factory to retail store in a low-cost manner. The inbound goods processing speed was significantly improved .The company believe a reduction in processing times of between 40-70% is possible.