Azienda cliente:
Italian manufacturer of super sports cars.
Ambito della soluzione:
pick to light ESL system for the management of supermarket withdrawals on board the production line.
The challenge
A wired process
Before the intervention of KFI, based on the online appointment times, the SAP management system generated the picking lists which were subsequently printed and assigned to the pickers. The operators carried out the picking activities relying on paper support. At the end of the process, with the aid of a portable printer, they generated a report of what was actually picked up, and attached it to the trolley. The latter, moved by an AGV, supplied the production with components.In case of missing items, the picker would collect their identification tags. At the end of the list, after sending the material to the assembly stations, the operator read the codes of the items sold out and requested the kanban by a special menu on the terminal. After replenishing the stock, the picker went to the assembly station and would deliver by hand what was previously not available.
To streamline the production process of the latest car model presented to the market, the client company asked KFI for a solution that would allow hands-free picking, in order to improve the operator ergonomics and reduce errors. Furthermore, since the automotive sector is conditioned by the logic of absolute efficiency, the digitization of the activity should also have ensured the possibility of automatically collecting data for the analysis and evaluation of the KPIs in the department.
The solution
The production line changes gears
To optimize the picking process on board the production line, KFI has proposed an application solution focused on the introduction of an ESL (electronic labels) system and related management software. KFI therefore proposed Spark, a middleware interfaced with SAP, which allows receiving the picking lists from the ERP. Each electronic label is driven by the same device which, in real-time, can turn on the integrated LEDs and modify the information on the display.
After having selected the picking list on the handheld device he is equipped with, the operator is guided on his path through the light signals emitted by the electronic labels. By means of Mark 2 ProGlove’s wearable reader, the pickings are confirmed by scanning the bars visible on the electronic label display. In case of partial or total missing items, the operator can request the kanban by reading an additional specific barcode. In addition, once the list is completed, the 7.5-inch ESL master combined with the trolley automatically shows the list of items actually picked up and highlights the missing ones. Finally, a digital dashboard was implemented at the service of supervisors, capable of displaying reliable information on processes in real time. With this tool it has become possible to constantly monitor the status of the carts and better manage the workloads of the resources involved in the activities.
The results
The word down to the exact minute
Following KFI intervention, it was possible to record an average improvement of 20% in the times dedicated to the picking of components – the operators dedicated to such activity, for each shift, going from 5 to 4 – and a substantial increase in accuracy. Finally, the time invested in the training new operators went from 4 days to 4 hours: a reduction of over 85%.