Australia’s CRT Group relies on Symbol wireless solutions to manage warehouse cargo
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introduction
CRT Group is a national logistics company in Australia. It mainly provides customers with comprehensive logistics services through road, rail and sea transportation. It is good at handling, packaging, warehousing and distributing raw materials such as chemical polymers and food ingredients. When it was established in 1981, the CRT Group was a family business. It has grown into a company with 250 skilled employees and contractors, and has established a nationwide distribution system that operates 365 days a year.
CRT Group has approximately 2500 containers, a large fleet consisting of special unloading vehicles, transport vehicles, pressure tank trucks, forklifts and lifting vehicles, as well as new railway technology. It is one of Australia’s largest professional logistics service providers.
Manual tracking system
CRT needs to process a large number of special raw materials, including raw materials for the production of various products such as medical syringes and optical discs. These raw materials need to be specially processed to avoid contamination of the product and maintain its natural characteristics. For this reason, the company requires that the treatment process be completed in a dust-free environment and the products should be isolated according to the characteristics of the raw materials. The company also needs to track all products in batches to maintain the traceability of the entire supply chain. In the process of managing the customer’s supply chain, CRT needs to store these raw materials and change their storage location to meet the customer’s sales needs.
To meet these needs, CRT Group has established container parking sites and warehouses in 6 locations in Australia. CRT’s warehouses and container parking areas store a large number of customer products ranging from plastic pellets to powdered raw materials. Keeping track of where these products are stored, the number of products, and the destination will be crucial.
The CRT Group previously relied on a paper-based manual system to manage this process. Forklift drivers operate according to the cargo selection and transfer instruction sheet provided to them. They need to make a mark on the document for each goods they handle, and then return the document to the warehouse clerk.
Mr. Sumith Perera, Chief Information Officer of CRT Group, said: “Our past working methods relied heavily on spreadsheets, and there was a long delay when the system was updated, which meant that we could not achieve the efficiency we expected. We once had Five systems are used for accounting and finance, container parking lot management, warehouse inventory management, and transportation scheduling. These systems are not integrated systems, so they are difficult to maintain and use.”
Perera and his team knew that they needed to find a better solution. This solution should integrate existing different systems and reduce the difficulty of forklift drivers and reduce the possibility of driver errors. They need to reduce their reliance on spreadsheets and paper printouts. Therefore, they approached Walker Datavision, a business partner of Symbol Technologies in the United States, for help, hoping to find and implement an ideal solution through Symbol’s products and Walker Datavision’s help.
Wireless solution
Mr. Perera said: “Our warehouse area is large, so we need a wireless solution because the limitations of wired solutions are too large. Our ideal solution is to use radio frequency (RF) and barcodes. Walker Datavision has been successful in the past. Similar projects have been completed, so we believe they can provide the solutions we need.”
In the Melbourne warehouse, CRT Group deployed 12 Symbol wireless access points and 4 rugged Symbol PDT 6846 wireless handheld data terminals. These terminals are not only light-weight, sturdy, and dust-proof, but also able to withstand the impact of being dropped from a height of 1.2 meters onto the concrete floor many times. This system is an ideal choice for data management. The middleware specially developed by Walker Datavision for CRT Group using .Net technology is connected to CRT’s Microsoft Navision enterprise ERP system.
Now, CRT’s high-efficiency wireless technology solutions have replaced the original paper-based and time-consuming systems, making inventory management and tracking faster, easier and more accurate.
Support and interoperability
For Perera and his team, the most important thing is what level of support they can get for the solution they choose. Because radio frequency and bar code solutions are the company’s key mission, it is very important to minimize system interruptions. Due to an important consideration in cost management, the team does not want to have to purchase additional equipment units in the event of a technical failure.
Mr. Perera said: “If an equipment unit stops working for some reason, we need to be able to repair or replace it quickly. In this way, employees who use it can continue to work. Walker Datavision provides an excellent solution to our problems. Solution, a support plan that includes “hot-plugging” of Symbol’s equipment units. We feel relieved because we know that if a Symbol handheld device fails, we can get one within a few hours. New equipment.”
Symbol Technology provides a complete solution from handheld devices to access points. This fact prompted the CRT Group to decide to adopt Symbol’s solutions. Mr. Perera said: “We hope that this solution will come from a single supplier like Symbol, so that there will be no problems with interoperability and there will be no confusion in the arrangement of technical support.”
Faster and error-free supply chain management
Mr. Perera said: “Using this system, we will help our customers manage their supply chain more effectively. For example, we can now tell customers that there are 10 tons of products left, but orders for this product are coming, so they More products need to be manufactured. This value-added service not only helps our customers to stay ahead of demand, but also enhances our competitiveness.”
CRT Group once found it difficult to find products that have been stored in the warehouse again, and this problem no longer exists. Mr. Perera said: “Because this system no longer relies on manual data entry, we not only save the time required to determine the inventory location, but also eliminate errors related to this.”
In an industry with low profit margins, not all companies can make this level of technology investment. Mr. Perera believes that this integrated wireless solution will be a key factor that differentiates the CRT Group from its competitors. He explained: “Customers have high expectations. This system can help us meet and exceed customer expectations. It is like a ticket to participate in a competition.”
The robustness of Symbol’s equipment is one of the reasons why CRT Group chose its products. Mr. Perera said: “Our company uses long-arm forklifts. This environment is a very harsh environment for sophisticated electronic equipment. In such an environment, standard handheld computers will soon be damaged. Symbol Technology PDT 6846 The performance of the wireless handheld data terminal is excellent. Since the solution started a year ago, no device has failed.”
Future plan
Since the company has successfully implemented this solution in Melbourne, CRT Group plans to extend it to other infrastructures in Australia. In addition, CRT Group also plans to extend this solution to the company’s container parking yard.
By adding more Symbol wireless access points, the CRT Group will be able to promote wireless management of container parking yards, and at the same time develop a system that can display the location of each container and the loaded cargo. Virtual hotspots will be installed in the container parking yard so that forklift drivers can upload and download data via wireless laptops. Forklifts in the container parking yard will be wirelessly connected to the Navision system that manages the warehouse. The company will eventually replace these wireless notebooks with PDAs.
Mr. Perera said: “Our parking lot has more than 2500 containers at any time, and all relevant information must be’stored’ in the minds of a small number of forklift drivers. We need to reduce the workload of forklift drivers. At the same time to reduce the risk of this situation to our business. Without our current Symbol Technology wireless infrastructure, the development of a new system will be complicated and expensive. Through the current method, we can control the warehouse management system Expand to manage these container parking yards.”
Mr. Perera said: “Symbol’s solution is warmly welcomed by our employees. It makes everyone’s work easier. In addition, we can also provide better services to our customers through this solution. To ensure that our customers and our own businesses can be competitive and efficient.”
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