Integration and flexibility are keys to improvement

On top of an immediate 10% productivity gain, OrbeSoft has simplified manual handling easily tenfold. Previously our inventory accuracy depended upon handlers knowing the software well and hitting the right key. Now routine decisions are taken in the background and everyone's job is a lot easier." So says Sam Harrison, production inventory control manager at TRW Automotive. He's talking about the Body Control Systems (BCS) division's implementation of OrbeSoft (marketed in the UK by Cemoc), now adopted at four US plants, which gave it the tools to design, build, test and deploy an automated and flexible data collection system which, crucially, includes business logic and automation. BCS is one of the world's largest suppliers of heating, ventilating and air conditioning controls. About 18 months ago the firm realised it could get serious improvements in materials management if it automated data capture. The team wanted to scan transactions, rather than continue hand keying, in order to improve productivity and deal with the familiar errors and obsolescence issues. But it also wanted to build business logic into the data capture automation to deliver further radical process improvements and also traceability. Going the extra mile Harrison says the team looked at two barcode solutions that would have linked to its KBM ERP system, but rejected both. They were expensive, he says, "and we would have incurred extra costs in getting help from the vendor every time we needed changes." OrbeSoft was different: "We chose it because of the cost and especially because we were free to do what we wanted in terms of programming our own improvements." In fact, OrbeSoft is a hosted system that runs on a Windows server, and emulates keystrokes, for example, to the KBM iSeries (AS/400) database. "It means we have client access and can flow data into KBM via a PC," explains Strand. And it also provides interfaces to wireless scanners (TRW uses Intermec) and, via ODBC, to TRW's databases for estimating and quoting, tracking efficiencies and scrap and so on. In brief detail, TRW has used the suite not only to automate data capture transactions from Intermec kit, but to extend them with embedded SQL statements of business rules. At its simplest, that now means wireless barcode scanning can receive purchased goods and allocate them to pre-defined stock locations in KBM, cutting out all manual handling and keying. Then at a more sophisticated level, OrbeSoft has enabled, for example, sequential control numbers to be added to items during the receipt barcode print operation. Control numbers are captured by OrbeSoft throughout assembly to achieve traceability, providing material and quality management with reports and information – while also enabling FIFO (first in, first out) inventory management, with exception alerts and override email workflow rules to manage inconsistencies at the point of scanning. And it's a similar story in material flow: drawing part revision validation has been automated, with OrbeSoft capturing that data through the barcode scan and referencing to the ERP system data to minimise shortfalls and obsolescence. Similar rules also automate management around issuing free-stock and back-flushed components for accurate replenishment. Together, these allow single scan of a kanban label to produce a FIFO-compliant localised picking list.