LGT Logistics

Businesses are devoting more and more attention to efficient warehouse management since order execution is becoming increasingly unpredictable, with an ever increasing percentage of urgent deliveries that need to be processed in a few hours. We often know more or less the exact number of finished items, but not the quantity or status of items being processed on each machine, which are very significant.

So it is very important to know in real time not only how many components are ready for sale but also the quantities of WIP and raw materials, which containers they are stored in, where the containers are, what stage of the process they have reached, the condition of the material in each container and how many containers are reserved for a particular shipment.

The functions of the STAIN+ suite’s LGT Framework, together with STAIN’s 10+ years of experience in developing logistics solutions for leading businesses, lead to a successful solution for managing in-house logistics flows. All stocks (raw materials, WIP and finished products) are handled by single Containment Unit (CU), giving all company functions full real-time visibility of all the materials available in the various process stages, the status of the materials and their location.

STAIN’s MES solutions  - integrated with common ERP systems – have enabled many clients to make their processes more efficient and increase their productivity and marginality to double figures, often well beyond their expectations.

The following is required for the successful development of a project to automate logistics flows within a production plant:

• the powerful LGT Framework that can provide a series of objects implementing the basic functions to be personalized, based on the production plant’s specific requirements;

• STAIN’s invaluable experience acquired in over 10 years developing successful projects for leading businesses;

• Advice on how to develop a project that can create value for the business, using STAIN’s proven method, which starts with a detailed analysis of the existing situation and goes on to develop a solution using the framework functions to handle each company’s specific requirements in terms of logistic processes.

STAIN has completed numerous logistics projects using the powerful LGT Framework of the STAIN+ suite.

Raw materials warehouse.

• Identification of each Containment Unit (CU) of incoming raw materials using barcode or RFID technology.

• Automatic integration with the management system to verify consistency with the purchase order and quantities in stock.

• Batch tracking management.

• Optimized storage of each CU.

• Real-time recording of CUs sent to the departments, with material conformity status control to prevent non-conforming materials from entering the production process.

• Management of raw materials returned to the warehouse from the production bays for realignment of the logical and physical quantities.

• Real-time computerized inventorying with verification of correspondences, replacing current manual inventory-taking on paper.

WIP warehouse.

• Barcode or RFID identification of each CU of unfinished product downstream of each machine at the various process stages.

• Visibility of CU stocks for each unfinished product code by operator, material status, location, production date/shift, batch, production machine, etc.

• Evidence of the status of the  materials and CUs in terms of conformity status (OK, reject, on hold).

• Integration with the PRD+ module to determine correspondence of the items produced by the machines during the various stages and the quantities contained in the CUs produced at each stage.

• Automatic relaying of stocks of CUs to ERP after each milestone.

• Real-time check of compatibility between the article being produced on the machine to which the CU is taken and its contents, in order to prevent rejects and errors.

Finished products warehouse.

• Identification of each CU (pallet, bin, crate, box, bundle, strip) to store in the warehouse.

• Multi-article CU storage management.

• Storage cell configuration.

• Calculation of article rotation indices.

• Algorithm for calculating the optimal storage cell based on the rotation index calculated for each article and the degree of warehouse coverage.

• Tracking of all movements by article, date/shift, operator and so on.

• Stock visibility by cell, article, storage date, operator, production order, client, features of the stored material,  materials status and numerous other search filters.

• Real-time and traditional periodic inventory-taking, with verification of the correspondence between logic, physical and available stocks in ERP systems.

• Handling of adjustments and real-time alignment with ERP.

• Real-time integration with the management system for aligned stocks.

Management of transport, consignments and despatches.

• Automatic importation from ERP or local definition of consignments to be made with the list of articles (despatch packing-list).

• Automatic importation from ERP or local definition of the transport required.

• Association of consignments with each transport.

• Identification of each incoming vehicle and tracking of vehicle entries and movements at the plant.

• Assignment of a consignment to each incoming vehicle and printing of the associate barcode packing list.

• Destination of the vehicle to a warehouse/storekeeper.

• Real-time inspection of each vehicle load based on the packing-list received, thereby avoiding despatch errors due to non-conformity with the article or material status.

• Execution of specific consistency and compatibility checks on the material to be loaded in order to avoid complaints by the client receiving the goods.

• Real-time visibility of the state of preparation of each packing-list.

• Real-time visibility of despatch box contents so that authorised operators always knows where the material for a particular client is located.

• Support for storemen in identifying the warehouse locations of the materials required for a particular packing-list.

• Validation of each transport.

• Relaying of full transport details to the management system, allowing automatic issuance of the physical transport documents (TDs), avoiding manual entries in the list of CUs loaded.

• Tracking of all operations allowing flow and operator efficiency analysis.

Data analysis.

• Recording of all warehouse movements on each CU for calculation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each article and operator.

• Exportability to Excel of all data for custom processing.