German beverage wholesalers use UHF RFID technology to improve warehouse replenishment efficiency
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A. Kempf Getr?nkegrosshandel is a beer, bottled water, and soft drink wholesaler in Balingen, Germany. It has implemented UHF in its warehouses.RFIDsystem. The system is used to identify those products placed in pallets that customers have placed orders and are ready to be transported to the conveyor belt, which is controlled by an automatic warehouse system. The RFID solution was provided by SSI Schöfer, and it went live in the company in December 2013.
A. Kempf has two independent distribution centers, one in Balingen and the other in Offenburg. The distribution center in Balingen serves 125-600 customers every day. During the peak distribution period, at least 174,000 boxes of beverages were shipped out of the Balingen warehouse; during the peak distribution period of the day, from 3 to 8 pm, employees need to assemble 60 trucks of goods.
The RFID reader recognizes the pallet by reading the RFID card of the forklift driver, and the RFID card is placed on the forklift’s pallet.
Starting in June 2012, with the continuous increase in orders, the company tends to adopt automated methods for warehouse management. The automation device includes a conveyor belt that transports the products from the warehouse to the assembly location, passing through two buffer zones during the process.
With the automation system in place, the warehouse staff put the products on the pallets. The forklift driver transports it to the receiving end of the conveyor belt, and the system judges the path of the customer’s order, and then delivers it to the loading area.
Automated transmission helps sort and sort, move a large number of loading pallets, or transport assembled products to suitable vehicles. However, before the implementation of the RFID system, it is necessary to manually record the ID code of the pallet bar code.
In order to reduce the replenishment time, after a year of installation and operation of the automatic transmission device, the RFID system was purchased from SSI Schöfer. A. Kempf installed 3 SickRFU 630 UHF RFID in the conveyor buffer zoneReader. A. Kempf employees have ID cards with embedded UHF RFID chips. Kampf declined to disclose the details of the RFID card.
The forklift driver puts the ID card on the forklift and registers the ID code of the card on the computer terminal on the forklift. The forklift driver will receive tasks from the computer terminal and view the products to be assembled. The software sends the relevant data to the computer terminal of the receiving station to determine the transmission path. When the driver transports the pallet to the transfer station, the reader reads the ID code (associated with the pallet) in the card and displays the customer information of the received product. In this way, the system has a clear record of the tray information received by this transfer station.
In addition, the system stores relevant information for A. Kempf’s management system in preparation for recording the completion of orders.
After adopting the RFID system, the company has greatly improved the efficiency of replenishment, reducing the replenishment time from 15 seconds to 2 seconds, adding up all the time saved in a day, and it takes about 8 hours. The implementation of the RFID system optimizes the replenishment process to cope with the need for reprinting of large quantities of goods. The company said that they made the right choice.
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