CASE STUDY

Challenges Faced

Constrained to eliminate the errors which are almost impossible to catch until after the production run ora already to the customer.

Any weaknesses in the Manufacturing support logistics affect Customers and brings manufacturing processes to a halt costing time/money.  Collectively, these errors are almost impossible to catch until the material is sold to a customer or the production run is complete. Both require manual intervention and are tedious to resolve after since it breaks automated flows.

Material management supporting lineside with a physical hand-off is a simple move of the materials on a forklift within the facility. Unfortunately, the systems still require a formal “shipment” and receipt confirmation of the materials to maintain inventory ownership tracking. Returns of unused raw materials further complicate this.Manufacturing operators track production output through work order completions. This is done before the material can transfer ownership and cannot be done pre-emptively because the work order completions are real-time inventory updates. This presented several opportunities for material to be passed to the transfer area without having system ownership changed.  Since the handoff area exists externally to the manufacturing area, there is no formal communication between the inventory transfer operators.

To compensate, receivers scan the manufacturing pallet tag to confirm ownership into the Warehouse Management System.

Timing delays in work order completion or any incorrect scans created multiple opportunities for desynchronization between systems.  The design also creates redundant processes as items enter and exit each system- once as raw materials and a second time as finished good.