Implementation of RFID with Hydra and SAP
Customer: Coroplast Fritz Müller GmbH & Co. KG
Project duration: 3 months
Our customer:
Coroplast Fritz Müller GmbH & Co. KG is a family-owned company headquartered in Wuppertal, Germany, which in over 90 years has become a global player in the development and production of technical adhesive tapes, cables & wires and wire harnesses. The company operates worldwide and produces not only at its headquarters in Wuppertal, but also at many other locations in Poland, China, Tunisia, the USA and Mexico, both under the Coroplast brand and other subsidiary brands.
Initial situation:
In the past, Coroplast performed the movement of goods from production to the warehouse manually, which led to delays and errors in tracking and monitoring the goods. Already at the packing machine, the stock receipt was booked, although the goods were still physically in production.
To solve these problems, the company decided to use RFID tags to identify goods and automatically post goods movements as part of the digitization process at the Wuppertal site. To do this, the existing IDoc interface to the Hydra MES system (MPDV Mikrolab GmbH) and the print programs in SAP had to be expanded.
By working in the SAP system, the RFID labels can already be attached to the pallets during production and provided with a unique identification number. Upon entry to the warehouse, the data is automatically read via an RFID gateway and transferred to the SAP system, eliminating the need for manual booking of individual packages. The time between confirmation in production and availability in the warehouse is reduced to a minimum. In addition, packages no longer have to be recorded and booked individually. A traffic light system at the RFID gate to the warehouse signals to the warehouse clerk whether all RFID tags have been read successfully and compares this data with the information from the confirmation in the production order in SAP.
What has HPC achieved?
- Extension of the IDoc interface at the MES solution Hydra to SAP
- Printing of RFID labels from SAP
- Processing of RFID data at the gates to the warehouse via JSON
- Implementation as web service in SAP
- Strongly simplified user interface for employees in production
Customer benefits:
By integrating various technologies into SAP, Coroplast was able to automate and digitize the production push. The introduction of RFID tags has helped eliminate errors in tracking and monitoring deliveries and eliminated delays in checking and releasing deliveries. This has led to improved inventory management and more efficient inventory control.
Overall, the implementation of RFID tags in combination with SAP has led to significant improvements in business processes and more efficient collaboration between production and warehousing. Due to the positive impact, Coroplast plans to expand this solution to other sites worldwide.
Challenges:
- Simultaneous passage of several pallets with the same material and the same order through the gates - SAP blocking logic.
- Complex interfaces between different manufacturers to SAP
