IDM ¦ Technology/IT
With the integration of the high-bay
storage facility, now all of Woerle’s
warehouses are represented in the ERP
CO2 footprint: since autumn 2019, they have been able to cut
about 5,000 truck tours between the different warehouses and
the headquarters.
The fully automatic high-bay storage facility with two temperature
zones has been an important part of the large-scale project.
This is where the company stores pallets with raw cheese products,
semi-finished products from its own production, finished
products, and retail goods. Via the procurement process, the
raw materials for cheese and processed cheese go into the highbay
warehouse, where an upstream QA test in receiving makes
sure that the CSB-System knows the qualities of all incoming raw
materials. The key parameters such as lot number and minimum
sell-by date as well as features like the fat content of the dry matter
or results of the visual inspection are entered in the system.
This integration of quality management allows in-process testing
throughout the entire supply chain, from reception and storage to
the shipment of the finished products.
With the integration of the high-bay storage facility, now all
warehouses are represented in the ERP. “In our company, all employees
see the same inventory accounts, whether raw materials,
finished products, purchased items, or packaging materials. This
makes it much easier for us to retrieve stock information.” The
user interfaces at the workstations for stock putaway and stock
removal are supplied by CSB too. “It was important to us that all
users work with CSB. It's a lot easier if all employees are working
in the same world,” says Hager.
RFID for enhanced production security and
accurate traceability
One of the fundamental challenges in processed cheese production
is the traceability of the final products. Every batch consists of
various raw cheese products, partly originating from the in-house
production, while some parts are purchased from other cheese
manufacturers. In melting, these different raw materials are combined
– and have to be quickly identifiable by the ERP system in
the case of an incident.
This task will soon be aided by RFID chips. Every trolley will
then be labeled with a chip, which is registered at the scale with
a hand-held scanner during component preparation. At batch
processing, the chip is verified automatically by the software. As
a result, the previously weighed cheese raw materials, which are
identified by the RFID code on the vats, can be allocated to the
correct batch according to the plans.
The aim is to make inventory management more transparent,
to enhance production security and control, and to reduce the
losses. What is more, the RFID chips smoothly communicate with
the CSB-System, ensuring reliable information processing without
manual rework.
10 · January/February 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com
/international-dairy.com
