In the private sector from supermarkets, many people already know the technology. We know e-ink or e-paper as electronic books. The technology is also used very successfully in the retail sector to dynamically adjust prices on supermarket shelves. So far, however, electronic shelf labels (ESL) have rarely been used in intralogistics. Yet there are astonishing possibilities in this area.

The small price tags are available either wired to digitally mark shelves in the supermarket or storage locations in the warehouse, or with an integrated radio module and battery. This makes the displays interesting for use in logistics and production.

Containers can be centrally controlled and updated via the SAP system without having to print out classic labels again. The barcodes are only adjusted digitally on the e-ink display. The customer can thus exchange data for production and container management between the SAP system and the electronic labels very flexibly and in real time.

The latest generation of Electronic Shelf Labels has now been launched with multicolor LEDs. In the production area, this enables targeted provision of the containers from the production supply area to the workstation. For this purpose, when the order is loaded at the workstation, a signal is sent to all containers that have been loaded for this order in the warehouse. The LEDs start flashing and the employee can pick the materials for the start of the operation in a targeted manner and make them available at the workstation. Different color identifiers ensure that several production orders running in parallel are not misdirected.