Storage Manufacturer gets lean with mobile data

When the leading provider of industrial and commercial storage solutions in Australia and New Zealand upgraded its ERP, it also took the opportunity to take its lean manufacturing philosophy one step further with a warehouse mobile data solution…

Dexion is an international company doing business throughout Asia Pacific and the Middle East. For more than 60 years, Dexion has been a market leader working with its partners to transform supply chain processes into better ways of doing business.

Dexion provides businesses large and small with industrial and commercial solutions to their storage and materials handling problems. Dexion offers expertise in the entire category, including simple storage racks and mobile shelving, up to the most complex integrated systems incorporating automation.

The company operates under a lean manufacturing philosophy, using kanban processes to help reduce waste and lead times, thereby ensuring a faster time to market.

As part of its commitment to continuous improvement the company has also recently invested significantly in technology, standardising applications and initiating a major upgrade of its old Baan software to the latest Infor enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Improving the warehouse
Central to kanban is the desire to reduce inventory holdings thereby decreasing the amount of money tied up in stock. So it's not surprising that in conjunction with its ERP upgrade, Dexion's management decided to deploy a warehouse application that would enable the use of barcoding technologies and mobile data capture in both its warehouse and manufacturing facility.

Peter Stewart, Dexion's IT manager explains, “The aim was to increase accuracy and to obtain more timely data. We also knew there were efficiencies to be gained. Our old system was very manual and labour intensive.”

A phased big bang
Stewart developed a strategic plan for his team to implement the new warehouse systems which would see the dated legacy application upgraded to the new ERP system, followed by the deployment of the mobile data collection units across Dexion’s warehouse operations within Australia and New Zealand. The roll out would be a phased “big bang.” Each location was to have its own go live date at which time it would switch to all three new technologies at once.

Selection of the warehouse application was relatively straightforward. Following a recommendation from Infor, Stewart opted to deploy Bridge2Barcode, a leading data collection solution for the Infor environment developed by Bridgelogix. Next, it was time to consider the hardware.

Stewart approached a number of organisations including SkyWire, a Sydney-based wireless solutions and radio frequency (RF) specialist that was already providing services to Dexion Integrated Systems. “We evaluated each supplier on price, product availability and service.

The relationship seemed strongest with SkyWire, they gave us the right answers during our initial meetings.

They recommended what we needed and most importantly, they were able to supply the equipment for us to trial and interface with our testing processes. This allowed us to validate processes before making any commitment.

SkyWire also arranged a site visit as part of the evaluation so that we could see one of their other clients running the Bridgelogix software on SkyWire-supplied equipment.”

With all three pieces of the puzzle in place, implementation began and in March 2008, Dexion rolled out its first site in Sydney. The ERP system was upgraded, Bridge2Barcode installed, and an enterprise centralized wireless LAN including server, wireless access points, a dozen nodes and a disaster recovery site were deployed.

Twelve Motorola MC9000 hand-held computers were placed within the factory and another dozen were provided to the warehouse.

In December the roll out continued at two sites in Victoria before moving on to Auckland in August 2009.

By the close of 2010, Stewart expects the new systems to be up and running at Dexion's Wellington facility. “The project has gone very smoothly, in large part because the SkyWire team really know what they are doing.

Technically skilled and with attention to detail, it's been a very easy process.”

“Each deployment has involved all the normal change management issues that you would expect with any ERP system,” Stewart adds. “There have been major process adjustments, roles have changed and been restructured. For warehouse and manufacturing staff, the combined implementation of the ERP and barcoding proved to be the right decision.

It simplified processes whereby users only had to learn one transaction on the hand held terminals rather than multiple ERP transactions.

From an IT perspective, it became just a simple element for us to manage.”

RF in the warehouse
Although a comparatively small part of the overall upgrade project, Dexion's introduction of barcoding and mobile data capture has already positively impacted its warehousing practices. All pickers, packers and warehouse staff regularly use the mobile units to capture data every time inventory is received, dispatched or moved.

“Because of the real time nature of the data that we capture, staff in our manufacturing facility have become more proactive in making decisions. They've accepted the empowerment that the new information is giving them,” Stewart notes. In one example, manufacturing staff identified the potential for barcode scanners in the kanban area.

Although not part of the original Sydney roll out plans, the suggestion was a good one and it was soon adopted.

The new equipment is also helping to reduce errors.

In the past it could take several days before a mistake was noticed. Now the warehouse system alerts staff to mistakes the instant they occur, enabling any problems to be rectified immediately.

Other benefits include faster stock takes, more accurate recording of warehouse information and faster decision making.

Stewart says, “We could have stuck with our old manual processes but I think its obvious we are getting tangible benefits from the mobile data capture. After all, we've elected to roll the technology out in four sites now.

We're still refining our use of the RF system. As we get more experienced with the processes, capabilities and options we find better ways to use the guns and the information.

It's a cycle of continuous development.”





> SkyWire
P: + 61 2 8923 6500
E: info@skywire.com.au
W: www.skywire.com.au









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