Intelligent Warehousing System Enablement: Rapid Cargo Collocation Drives Enterprises' Productivity Leapfrog Analysis

Competition in the manufacturing industry, supply chain iteration accelerated at the moment, the competition for production efficiency has long penetrated the front line of production, extended to the warehouse management of this “behind the scenes pivot”. The traditional warehousing model, the inefficiency of the goods receiving link, errors and information faults, like invisible shackles, continue to drag down the production rhythm, becoming a key constraint on the release of enterprise capacity short board. Intelligent warehousing system by virtue of the Internet of Things, big data, the deep integration of automation technology, reconfigure the whole process of goods receiving, “fast receiving” as the core breakthrough, through the production and warehousing of the synergies of the blockage, for the enhancement of the overall production efficiency injected strong kinetic energy, and become an important hand of the enterprise to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and build the core competitiveness.

First, the traditional warehousing and collocation pain points: the invisible shackles of production efficiency

Traditional enterprise warehousing management, the goods receiving process of sloppy and inefficient, in multiple dimensions to form a production resistance, these pain points are intertwined, becoming an obstacle to improve production efficiency of the invisible shackles, so that enterprises are caught in the “slow receiving, production stops, high cost” vicious cycle.

The inefficiency and error of manual operation is the primary bottleneck of the requisitioning process. The traditional collation relies on manual checking the material receipt, on-site inventory, manual registration of accounts, the whole process is not only time-consuming and lengthy, but also very susceptible to human error due to negligence of inventory errors, specification errors and other issues. An equipment manufacturing company has statistics, the average time consumed in its workshop collaterals more than 1 hour / time, monthly due to errors in collaterals lead to the production line rework rate of 4%, once the wrong material into the production process, not only need to stop to investigate, but also additional material loss and rework costs, directly interrupting the production rhythm, resulting in waste of production capacity.

Information disconnect triggered by the process disconnect, exacerbating the production of passive. Traditional warehousing, material application, approval, warehousing, financial accounting and other links are independent of each other, relying on paper documents or manual transfer of information, information transfer there is a significant lag. Material receiving personnel to submit an application, need to wait for the approval of personnel offline signature confirmation, approval and then go to the warehouse to collect materials, the entire process takes an average of more than 2 hours. If you encounter urgent production orders, the lag in material supply will directly lead to production line stoppages waiting for materials, serious single stoppages caused by the loss of production capacity up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the continuity of the production plan is completely broken, it is difficult to guarantee the delivery of the order time.

Sloppy inventory management and lack of traceability, laying hidden production problems. Traditional warehousing lack of real-time inventory monitoring and accurate traceability, inventory data lagging behind, often appearing in the “books have goods, the actual lack of goods” or “books have no goods, the actual backlog” situation. Enterprises in order to avoid the risk of supply shortage, often blindly increase inventory, resulting in a large amount of capital occupation, waste of storage space; at the same time, the lack of full-process data recording of the goods received, once the production process of material quality problems, can not quickly locate the time of receipt, receipt of personnel, supplier information and other key traceability nodes, can only be manually reviewed and investigated, the disposal of a long period of time, the responsibility for the definition of the difficulty of the quality of the problem occurs repeatedly The probability of recurrence of quality problems is high, which further lowers the production efficiency.

Second, the core logic of intelligent warehousing systems: technology to reconfigure the collocation process

Intelligent warehousing system is not a simple stack of equipment, but a collection of accurate perception, intelligent control, data linkage in one of the warehouse management system, the core logic lies in the technology to empower, break the traditional process barriers to collocation, to achieve the automation of the collocation of goods, accurate and efficient, for the production to provide stable and timely material support.

Automated collation, cracking the problem of manual operation inefficiency. Intelligent warehousing system equipped with automatic sorting equipment, intelligent shelves, unmanned trucks and other hardware, combined with RFID tag recognition, two-dimensional code scanning technology, to achieve the whole process of automation of goods receiving. The material requisitioner submits the material requisition application through the system, the system automatically matches the inventory information, generates the requisition task, and the unmanned equipment automatically locates the goods, accurately sorts them, and automatically discharges them from the warehouse, without manual counting and handling. This kind of automated operation compresses the single time of requisitioning from hourly to minute level, increases the accuracy rate of requisitioning to more than 99.9%, completely eliminates the error of manual counting, and transforms the requisitioning link from a “time-consuming link” to a “high-efficiency link” to provide timely material supply for the production process. It can provide timely material supply for production.

Data linkage, open the information closed loop of production and warehousing. Intelligent warehousing system and enterprise ERP, MES, production scheduling system depth docking, build the whole chain data synergy system. Consumption data real-time synchronization to the production system, the production department can grasp the inventory dynamics in real time, planning ahead of the demand for collaterals; warehousing department according to the production plan to automatically prepare materials, to achieve on-demand consumption, accurate distribution; financial system automatically access to the consumption data, to achieve automatic reconciliation and costing, without manual statistics. This kind of data linkage breaks the information silo, so that the collocation, production, warehousing, financial links seamlessly, greatly improving the efficiency of process synergy, to avoid the production of passive due to information lag.

Intelligent control and realization of traceability of the whole process of collation. Intelligent warehousing system through the Internet of Things technology, real-time monitoring of the whole process of warehousing, storage, collation and discharge of goods, automatic recording of collation personnel, time, goods specifications, quantity, batch and other key information, forming a complete collation data chain. Once there is a material problem in the production process, the data chain can be used to quickly trace the source, accurately locate the problematic link, and significantly shorten the problem disposal cycle. At the same time, the system can automatically warn the risk of out-of-stock according to the production plan and inventory dynamics, triggering the replenishment process in advance to ensure the stable supply of production materials and reduce the potential risk of production interruption from the source.

Third, the rapid adoption of multi-dimensional empowerment of production efficiency: from a single point of breakthrough to the overall leap forward

Intelligent warehousing system brings the goods quickly claimed, not only shorten the time of claiming, but from the production preparation, process synergy, inventory turnover, quality assurance and other dimensions, to provide systematic support for the improvement of production efficiency, to achieve from a single point of optimization to the overall effectiveness of the transformation of the leap, so that the rhythm of production is more compact, more stable and more efficient.

Compress the production preparation time and activate the potential of production capacity. Production preparation time is the key front link that affects production efficiency. Under the traditional mode, the goods take a long time to be claimed, resulting in the pre-production preparation cycle being lengthened, and the production capacity cannot be fully released. Intelligent warehousing system to realize the rapid adoption of the adoption time from the hour level compressed to the level of minutes, the production staff can quickly access the required materials, directly into the production process. After the introduction of the system in an auto parts company, the production preparation time of a single production line has been shortened by 70%, and the production tasks that could have been completed in 3 batches per day have been upgraded to 6 batches per day, and the capacity utilization rate has been increased by nearly 50%, and the compactness of the production rhythm has been significantly improved, and the potential of the production capacity has been fully activated.

Strengthening process synergy to ensure production continuity. Production continuity is the core of high-efficiency production. Under the traditional collocation mode, the stoppage of work and waiting for materials caused by untimely supply of materials is the main factor that destroys the continuity. Intelligent warehousing system through the real-time data linkage, so that the production department and warehousing department information synchronization, the production department can be based on real-time inventory in advance of the launch of the collocation application, warehousing department in advance of the preparation of materials, to ensure that the material on-demand punctual delivery to the production line. After the application of the system in an electronic manufacturing enterprise, the number of stoppages in waiting for materials dropped from 18 times per month to 3 times per month, the continuity of the production line was greatly improved, and the monthly production capacity was increased by 30%, which completely solved the problem of production interruption due to the lagging supply of materials, and ensured the stable implementation of the production plan.

Optimize inventory turnover, release resource efficiency. Inventory turnover efficiency is directly related to the production of capital consumption and warehousing space utilization, traditional warehousing, due to the lagging data of adoption, enterprises often need to hoard a large number of materials, resulting in inventory backlogs, occupying a large amount of capital and warehousing space, restricting the effectiveness of enterprise resources to play. Intelligent warehousing system realizes accurate requisition and real-time inventory update, enterprises can realize on-demand procurement according to the production demand, precise preparation of materials, to avoid inventory backlog. After the introduction of the system in a chemical enterprise, the inventory turnover days from 70 days to 38 days, inventory capital consumption has been reduced by 40%, releasing storage space to accommodate more production materials, releasing funds can be invested in production equipment upgrades and process research and development, providing a resource guarantee for the enhancement of productivity, forming a virtuous cycle of “reducing inventory, improving efficiency and promoting development! forming a virtuous cycle of ”reducing inventory, improving efficiency and promoting development".

Build a strong quality defense and reduce production loss. Material quality is the basis of production efficiency, the traditional mode, the collocation of difficult to trace, once the quality problem, not only need to rework, but also delay the production schedule, resulting in additional losses. Intelligent warehousing system through the whole process of data traceability, can quickly locate the problematic materials of the receiving link, supplier information, to facilitate timely traceability and rectification, to avoid the problematic materials into the production process. After the application of the system by a food processing company, the rework rate due to material quality problems dropped from 6% to 1.2%, reducing rework losses by more than 300,000 yuan per month, significantly reducing losses in the production chain, indirectly improving production efficiency, and significantly enhancing product quality stability, which has established a good market reputation for the enterprise.

Fourth, landing practice: the application of intelligent warehousing system effectiveness and key experience

From the point of view of the landing practice of a number of enterprises, the application of intelligent warehousing system is effective, and its key experience in the landing process, but also for more enterprises to provide a replicable, can learn from the path, fully verified the value of rapid adoption of the driving force of production efficiency.

The practice of a large-scale machinery manufacturing enterprises is very representative. The enterprise was previously faced with low collocation efficiency, serious inventory backlog, frequent production stoppages, etc., the introduction of intelligent warehousing system, first of all, to achieve intelligent transformation of the collocation process, the collocation time from an average of 50 minutes shortened to 6 minutes, the collocation accuracy rate of 99.95%; Secondly, through the linkage of the data with the production and financial systems, the number of days of inventory turnover was shortened from 80 days to 42 days, inventory At the same time, the number of stoppages in waiting for materials was reduced from 20 times per month to 4 times per month, the production line capacity utilization rate was increased by 42%, and the monthly output value was increased by 28%. In only 8 months, the enterprise recovered the input cost of the system, and the production efficiency and economic benefits were doubly improved, and the market response speed was also significantly accelerated.

In the landing process, enterprises need to grasp three key lessons. First, the demand for accurate matching, according to the enterprise production scale, material characteristics, frequency of collocation, select the appropriate system functions and hardware configuration, to avoid redundancy or insufficient functionality, to ensure that the system is highly compatible with the actual needs of the enterprise; second is the ability of the staff to match the first-line operators, managers to carry out layered training to ensure that employees are proficient in the system operation and management logic, and at the same time, to establish operational norms and assessment mechanisms to ensure the efficient operation of the system; third, the system synergy to ensure that the intelligent warehousing system and the existing ERP, MES and other systems seamlessly connect, open the data chain, avoid information silos. The third is the system synergy to ensure that the intelligent warehousing system and the existing ERP, MES and other systems seamless docking, open the data link to avoid information silos, so that the data really serve the production decision-making, to achieve the whole process of synergistic and efficient operation.

V. Future Trends: Intelligent Warehousing and Continuous Advancement of Production Efficiency

With the deepening of Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing, intelligent warehousing systems will continue to iterate and upgrade, and its role in empowering production efficiency will be extended from the collar to the production of the whole chain, providing stronger support for the continued advancement of production efficiency, and promoting enterprises to move towards a more efficient and smarter development of the new stage.

AI-driven intelligent prediction, so that the collocation more forward-looking. In the future, the intelligent warehousing system will be equipped with AI algorithms to accurately predict the trend of material demand through the in-depth analysis of historical adoption data, production plans, market orders, and supply chain dynamics, and automatically generate adoption plans and replenishment programs in advance. When the system predicts that a certain type of material is about to enter the peak of collocation, it can remind the warehousing department to prepare materials in advance, and even automatically trigger the procurement application, realizing the accurate matching of material supply and production demand, further compressing the production preparation time, allowing the production rhythm to be more forward-looking, avoiding production passivity due to material shortages, and promoting the production efficiency from “reactive response” to “active response”. It further compresses the production preparation time, makes the production rhythm more forward-looking, avoids the production passivity caused by material shortage, and promotes the production efficiency from "passive response" to "active prediction".

Unmanned and flexible adaptation, adapting to multiple production scenarios. For high temperature, high dust, high precision and other special production scenarios, the future intelligent warehousing system will realize fully unmanned operation, through the AGV, unmanned forklift, robotic arm and other equipment and intelligent shelves linkage, to realize the automatic discharge of materials, automatic distribution to the production line, without human intervention, not only to ensure the safety of the operation of the special scenarios, but also to further enhance the efficiency of the collocation. At the same time, the system will have stronger flexible adaptability, according to the material specifications, weight, storage needs, automatically adjust the shelf layout, equipment parameters, to meet the material management needs of different industries and different production modes, to cover more manufacturing segments, and provide efficiency improvement solutions for more enterprises.

Ecological synergy of the whole chain to build an intelligent production system. In the future, the intelligent warehousing system will be deeply integrated into the whole chain of enterprise production, and realize deeper synergy with the production equipment, MES system, and supply chain system to form an intelligent ecology from material requisition, manufacturing to supply chain distribution. The data will be synchronized to the production equipment in real time, and the equipment will automatically adjust the production parameters according to the material consumption; the supply chain system will optimize the distribution rhythm according to the consumption data to realize the efficient linkage between production and supply chain. This ecological synergy will further compress the production cycle, improve production flexibility, enable enterprises to quickly respond to market demand, realize the double leap in production efficiency and market competitiveness, and promote enterprises to a new height of intelligent manufacturing.

In the manufacturing industry to the key stage of intelligent transformation, the improvement of production efficiency has become the core proposition of enterprise survival and development. Intelligent warehousing system to the rapid adoption of goods as a breakthrough, through technological innovation to reconfigure the warehouse management process, from the production preparation, process synergy, inventory turnover, quality assurance and other multi-dimensional cracking of the traditional warehousing pain points for the improvement of overall production efficiency provides a practical path. For enterprises, the introduction of intelligent warehousing systems, not only the upgrading of warehouse management, but also the overall empowerment of production efficiency, is the enterprise in the fierce competition in the market to seize the first opportunity to achieve sustainable development of the key choices. In the future, with the continuous iteration of technology, intelligent warehousing systems will continue to release the potential for the advancement of production efficiency to inject a steady stream of power, and promote the enterprise towards a more efficient, smarter, more competitive new journey.