Problem statement
Customer was India's largest and Asia's second largest paint company. They have wide range of products in their portfolio, ranging from variety of paints to waterproofing solutions, from adhesives to painting tools and wall papers. These are further classified into different categories, based on their packing's, i.e. in buckets or Lids. To meet ever increasing demand, production growth has been exponential. To add on top of that, they have been adding more and more products in their portfolio. As the current process was totally manual, they were facing organizational challenges in following fields:
What Were They Looking For
They were looking to have real-time data collection system, with following capabilities:
STALLION , Leader In Industry Solutions
Stallion has cost-effective product traceability solutions designed to seamlessly integrate into existing operations. For this specific use case, where in customer was looking for end to end traceability, right from manufacturing to depots, needed customized solution, with a mix of Handheld terminals, Area Imaging scanners and industrial printers, keeping in mind certain operation challenges that are present in various stages of workflow. Manufacturing environment requires devices with ruggedness and resistant to dust & humidity. To top that, customer being paint manufacturer, requires Intrinsically Safe and Non-Incendive devices as the manufacturing environments contains combustible substances. Also, as they are manufacturing products with packaging in different form factors (Cartoons, Buckets, Drums etc.), they need a solution that is equally effective on all.
Stallion has cost-effective product traceability solutions designed to seamlessly integrate into existing operations.
For this specific use case, where in customer was looking for end to end traceability, right from manufacturing to depots, needed customized solution, with a mix of Handheld terminals, Area Imaging scanners and industrial printers, keeping in mind certain operation challenges that are present in various stages of workflow.
Manufacturing environment requires devices with ruggedness and resistant to dust & humidity. To top that, customer being paint manufacturer, requires Intrinsically Safe and Non-Incendive devices as the manufacturing environments contains combustible substances. Also, as they are manufacturing products with packaging in different form factors (Cartoons, Buckets, Drums etc.), they need a solution that is equally effective on all.
For stores and depots, one needs a hand held terminal (HHT) with display and enhanced scanning capability. This HHT should have all the capabilities of operating as a mobile computer, without compromising on ruggedness and resistance to dust and humidity. Most of the warehouses or depots in India have cemented floors, and the HHTs are bound to fall during operations. HHTs had to be rugged enough with tumble protection, to continue working without glitch, even after multiple falls. Also there are dust and humidity factors in India that has to be kept in mind. Paint stores/depots are mostly without proper ventilation and with high amount of dust in air, given the kind of materials that are stored. HHTs have to have a higher Ingress Protection (IP) rating, so that it is certified to be resistant to both environmental factors.
Solution Proposed Henceforth
After doing process walk through and understanding the customer’s current process, Stallion proposed them 2D barcoding solution. This solution consists of different devices for their different work environments, given the need of process and environment.
Manufacturing:
Depots
For HHT requirements in Asian Paint Depots, Stallion recommended CT50, a premium Honeywell Handheld terminal, is an IP67 rated, android 6.0 based HHT, with 4.7 inch Corning Gorilla glass display. It comes with industry leading Qualcomm snapdragon 801 processor with 2.26 GHz quad core CPU for robust performance and better power efficiencies. It comes with best in class N6600 Imager scan engine, capable of scanning both 1D and 2D barcodes. These HHTs will be scanning QR codes placed on finished goods products at customer’s manufacturing plants, when the products are brought into the depots, and when they are shipped out. They will be creating a thin client application which runs on Android and interfaces with SAP at real time and provides real time visibility of what is received at depots and what are shipped out of depots. Every product shipped out from the depots can be linked against an order, with in the application itself, and same can be updated in SAP at real time. As these HHTs are linked with SAP at real time using wireless access points, all the data will be interchanged at run time.
Value Addition For Customer
Given that barcoding is done at finished goods and the same barcodes are scanned at depots, when the product is shipped in and shipped out, customer will have traceability from finished goods from manufacturing to being shipped out of depots. This can be carried into stores as well to have end to end traceability. This will provide solution to customer’s initial requirement.