Schnellecke Logistics is sequencing parts for an important customer from the automotive sector in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
The Schnellecke Group is an international family-run business offering a variety of logistics services. One focus of Schnellecke is value-added logistics for the automotive industry. About 19,000 employees in 14 countries at 73 locations develop overall concepts, ranging from transport and warehousing through pre-assembly and value-added services to the sequential manufacturing of individual parts and modules and container-specific packaging. An important foundation for success is their commitment to continuous innovation. Thanks to this, Schnellecke Logistics is always one of the first ones to make use of technological innovations for logistic practice.
A well-known Schnellecke customer manufactures cars as a right-hand drive model in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Schnellecke Logistics sequences the required small and large parts directly at the plant so that the right parts for the vehicle variant being built are always available just-in-time and just-in-sequence, i.e. in the correct sequence on the assembly line. Previously, this was done on the basis of long paper lists. The process was time consuming, slow and error-prone. Extra staff was required for the quality control in order to be able to deliver the agreed products to the customer.
The new solution saves approximately 20% time thanks to the optimized information supply and it reduces the picking or sequencing error rate to almost zero!
Dr. Abaid Goda, Senior Manager IT-Operations, Schnellecke Logistics
Schnellecke Logistics opted for the Ubimax Frontline AR platform with the xPick application combined with Ubimax’s wrist-worn RFID reader, xBand. This enables multi-order picking for up to 24 vehicles simultaneously. The paper lists were replaced by electronic displays in the form of Windows 10 Professional-based tablets. The mobile tablets are operated in holders on the trolleys to be loaded. They show the order pickers which parts they need to place or hang in which box or holder on the trolley. When the trolleys are filled and moved to the production hall, the tablet is attached to the next free trolley. The Ubimax Frontline server is hosted by Schnellecke Logistics in a data center near Dresden and is used cloud-based in South Africa. The tablets use the Wi-Fi in the production hall. The implementation of the project took only four weeks to prepare and two weeks to roll out locally.