Compound conditioning is key to polymeric product quality. They must be in equilibrium and not expire before use.

A manufacturer of moulded polymeric components was struggling to meet its schedules for Jaguar Land Rover. Quality was down, waste was up. The company were throwing money away.

Sufficient materials were in stock but not enough was available for production. The rest was quarantined in conditioning. Shelf life of was short enough for many batches to go beyond their expiry date to scrap.

The sight of storemen writing out goods-in details pointed to the solution.

Today

Deliveries are on time, waste is minimal, quality high.

1. Suppliers label crates with barcodes.
2. Storemen scan all movements for 100% stock accuracy.
3. Issues are FIFO.
4. No stock expires.
5. The Codetrack system works out demand daily from stock records, JLR schedules and conditioning times.
6. Staff and suppliers have a web portal to manage materials.

Odette labels identify batches of material (stock image: NiceLabel)

The project

Codeway had already supplied the company with a system to verify despatches. Discussions with the project team and suppliers set three goals for the materials project: accurate stocks, FIFO issue to production, rolling supply schedules.

Stocks

Storemen used to write down delivery details. Now suppliers put an Odette label on each crate. Storemen have wireless terminals to scan the crates and direct them to storage locations. QA scan crates in and out of quarantine.

Stock management tasks menu.

FIFO

Production teams request materials on demand. Lists of crates and locations in FIFO order come up on the storemens' terminals. They scan the crates and issue them.

Crates in conditioning and quarantine do not appear.

After production the storemen weigh and relabel part used crates. They scan them back into stock.

Storemen scan crate and location codes

Rolling supply schedules

Today staff and suppliers have a Codetrack web portal to manage supplies. It links to the company’s ERP system.

Codetrack works out future demand for materials every day from JLR component schedules and inventory.

Realtime materials management

Now the company and its suppliers are able to see what materials are needed to meet assembly schedules. Codetrack allows for current stock and conditioning times. Barcode scanning lets the company manage its material supplies in real time.