Wireless Network Tracks Finished Goods Inventory at Guide
Guide
Corporation, a full service provider of high quality automotive lighting
solutions, serving automobile manufacturers worldwide, faced the age-old
story of the integrity of their finished goods inventory at their
Anderson, Indiana facility.
Guide’s ERP system provided the inventory data used to determine
shipping availability and manufacturing requirements. Yet on a daily
basis, supervisors, stock chasers, and shipping people could be found
hand counting inventory to make sure they had the "right" numbers. In
addition, Guide was making way too many inventory adjustments. The
substantial dollar variance attributed to these adjustments finally
brought the problem to a head.
Guide uses standard shipping labels printed in numerous manufacturing
work cells and affixed to the loads. The label contains bar coded stubs
for inventory counting and shipping. In the cell, the workers would tear
off the inventory stub and place it in a pouch. Various truck drivers
then moved the loads to the two shipping docks and stored them by
location. Separately, production control people would collect the
pouches and take them to the shipping room offices where, throughout the
day, the stubs were scanned into their QAD system. The bar codes on the
stubs were PDF417 format, containing all the necessary data required to
complete the inventory transaction when scanned.
This process worked fairly well, but it had flaws. Often loads were shipped before they had been scanned for inventory. The separate paths taken by the loads and stubs to get to the shipping areas were an opportunity for error. However, this process got the job done with fewest extra bodies and with the least amount of equipment. Getting control of inventory was important to Guide, but they had significant budget restraints. Richard Prather, Senior Business Analyst at Guide, was tasked with finding a data collection system within these constraints.
“After several calls discussing our situation with potential vendors, I
invited Purple Oak to visit,” said Prather. “They came and spent most of
the day with us. I was impressed with Purple Oak’s approach to the whole
process – not an immediate proposal, but a discussion paper that
captured the requirements and presented multiple solutions with cost
estimate ranges. As a business analyst, I have always believed the
formulation of the problem is far more essential than the solution. Most
always this approach leads to the simplest, most cost effective
solution. That is exactly what we got from Purple Oak – a good analysis
of the requirements up front, great knowledge of the resources and tool
sets available, and a simple straight forward cost effective proposal.”
The solution Guide chose to implement was a real time wireless local
area network, consisting of multiple Cisco radio access points
connected to an existing Ethernet network. HHP Dolphin 7450 hand held
computers with integrated bar code scanners would function as mobile
ANSI terminals, connecting to the Unix host running their existing QAD
application software.
This solution allowed Guide’s QAD data entry screen to be used directly
on the hand held computers. They could also use their existing PDF bar
code label stubs. No proprietary software or custom programming was
required. The data would go directly into QAD, with no interfacing,
downloading, uploading or other intermediate processing steps required.
Guide recognized immediate results. According to Prather, “We
implemented the project at both shipping docks and have received
feedback from the plant about the good results, evidenced by the
reduction in the number of inventory adjustments and negative
inventories. They also believe in the inventory figures provided by the
system and feel the inventory process is in much better control. Not
only did we realize savings from the application, but thousands of
dollars were saved compared to the cost of the other solution being
proposed. Purple Oak met our business needs, and did it with the right
solution – all for less than the amount we had approved for the
project.”
