Primary Industries: - Manufacturing , Alcohol Bottling
ERP(s): JD Edwards
Abstract:
This involved custom development along with using basic DSI tools.
Integration with conveyor systems to perform work order completion, pallet creation, materials backflush, and label creation.
Details, Use Case:
This project was in an alcohol bottling plant. They had a number of problems keeping track of inventory as it came off the bottling line. Each line did one product at a time. Each completed case had a bar code for the item on it. The cases travelled down a conveyor system to a palletizer system that shrink wrapped each pallet. The palletizer counted and created a single item pallet until the end of the run which could create a partial pallet. The pallet would then be picked up and put into a location in the warehouse. In order to know where to put that item, the warehouse manager spent at least an hour every morning listing out where that item was currently stored and where there were empty locations. That list was given to the lift truck drivers so they would know where to put the product away. The lift driver was required to enter the item, quantity and the final location. It was not possible for product to go directly to the shipping dock to fill orders as they had no visibility to open orders during that process. The process for consuming raw material was all done manually after the counts were turned in from the bottling floor.
The new system performed a number of functions that were not present before. As each pallet was created, a pallet ID was created, a LPN label was printed and applied to the shrink wrapped pallet, the raw material was back-flushed, the lift driver was directed to a putaway location or to a dock location to fill an open order. The lift truck driver could scan the LPN label and then be directed to where that pallet needed to go. They no longer needed to consult a list of available locations. Picking orders was also improved since they were now directed to the location rather than consult the list. They also no longer needed to manually enter the product information as they could just scan the LPN label which contained all the required information.