Case Study | Returnable Transport Items Management

Challenge
To master the growing requirements in the area of intralogistics, vehicle manufacturers have been successfully using RFID technologies in various applications for many years. As a rule, an innovative roll-out concept is especially developed for the carrier management to be used in a standardised tracking process.

Background
To be able to implement roll outs in an efficient and costsaving way in the factories worldwide, all interfaces and system components must be inter-coordinated and defined. For this purpose, an internal shared service is often set up in the central IT department to establish comparable and stable functions as well as processes and solutions in all RFID applications in all the sites around the world.

Solution
A central IT architecture is set up and used by the individual factories, due to which a positive business case quickly develops by means of economies of scale. Intelligent RFID systems not only support the reliable registration of the carries, but also determine the course and the direction of movement of the objects at the loading gate or as a mobile reading point in industrial trucks. As a group-wide IT standard for carrier management and as auto ID device management in the logistics in general, the CrossTalk product is used in the case of the car manufacturer. Furthermore, by means of the carrier management application, a component supplier or an external partner can directly access container stock on site of the vehicle manufacturer which is relevant for him and, for example, more quickly organise supply of components in the context of logistics optimisation. In return, the automobile manufacturer has access to the container stock on site of the component supplier, allowing for a more efficient use of the carriers in the complete logistics chain and reduction of loss and search time.

Results
The complete CrossTalk-based carrier management application runs as shared service in the data processing service centre of the vehicle manufacturer. The individual local read points in the factories are connected by means of the intelligent Kathrein RFID readers with the integrated CrossTalk agent. In the carrier management application, each carrier is automatically assigned a status which provides information about the individual state. Due to the resulting high transparency in regard to the number, state and position of the individual carriers, there is no more need for costly exceptional loads between the factories and suppliers. Furthermore, the obtained visibility reduces loss and allows for optimisation of the total number of containers.

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Case Study (September 2017 | en)