The following is a case study dealing with a stainless steel profile manufacturer’s desire to streamline its logistical operations within its five warehouses. Thanks to the implantation of an RFID solution running on the Psion Teklogix Workabout Pro, India-based Viraj Profiles Ltd. met all of its warehouse management directives and saw a return on its investment in just sixth months.
Background
Based in India, Viraj Profiles Ltd. is a leading global manufacturer of stainless steel profiles that exports to more than 80 countries on four continents from multiple manufacturing facilities and warehouses. As one of the largest producers of stainless steel long products in the world, and the largest producer of stainless steel flanges in the world, logistics efficiency is critical to Viraj’s operations.The steel profiles are delivered from the manufacturing locations to five warehouses in India in the form of bundles weighing as much as a half-ton each. Movement of the bundles on the warehouse floor requires overhead cranes, making sorting and retrieval for shipments time consuming and difficult.
The Problem
In the past, bundles were marked with manually written codes and placed in stacks within the warehouse based on the availability of space. Once each day, workers on the warehouse floor would manually update the back end system to reconcile the location versus the items.This lack of real-time visibility made it time consuming and laborious to retrieve a specific bundle, as per a packing list. On occasion, human error led to erroneous shipments, resulting in a client’s refusal to accept a shipment at destination.
In order to streamline the logistical operations within the warehouse, Viraj sought out an RFID tracking system that could operate on a mobile computing device capable of handling the rugged conditions of the shop floor. The system needed to meet several goals including:
- Gaining precise real-time location data for all steel profile bundles
- Fast and accurate bundle retrieval
- Preventing expensive erroneous shipments
- Faster inventory
- Reduced labor costs
The Solution
After considering other options, Viraj implemented an RFID solution from Vicinity RFID running on the Psion Teklogix Workabout Pro 7527 in all five of its warehouses.
Vicinity RFID recommended the Psion Teklogix Workabout Pro because the workers on the warehouse floor were used to rough handling devices and required a user-friendly handheld system that could be operating using the fewest number of keystrokes. In addition to its usability and durability, the Workabout Pro was also selected because the modular design makes it inherently scalable, enabling Viraj to easily add additional units as the demands of the business increase.
With this new system, location versus items are now scanned from the RFID tags and stored in the Workabout Pro. They are then transferred to the server by docking the device, minimizing the potential for human error, and helping Viraj to achieve 99 percent inventory visibility. The entire process of inventory reconciliation now takes about an hour, as opposed to the 12 hours it took before the RFID implementation.
“The combination of Psion Teklogix’s devices and Vicinity RFID has enabled us to meet all of our warehouse management objectives, and we saw the return on our investment after just six months,” said Nitan Chhatwal, managing director at Viraj Profiles Ltd. “By automating the reconciliation process, shipments are now faster and more accurate and we have experienced a 20 percent increase in dispatches.”
