Warehouse Inventory Management

We built a custom material management systems for a Midwest manufacturer with a 700,000 square foot warehouse. The system integrated into their existing inventory system and provides them with automated capture of inventory receipts, moves and issues.

Every night orders are organized into truck level shipments. A fork truck driver requests a list of trucks to load, and the order data is downloaded to the reader and imported into a database that resides on the device itself. This way, the driver can continue to pick orders if there are any network problems, and all of his picks are validated in real time.

The shipping screen

How it works

Intermec 700 portable readers were installed on each fork truck. The readers sit in a vehicle dock that supplies power to the 700, and allows the connection of an Intermec 1553 extra long range scanner. The drivers are working in an unheated warehouse, so they scan product and location labels through the fork truck's Plexiglas windows. The 700 can be removed from the vehicle dock by the driver and used outside of the fork truck, if needed.

Switchboard, our data collection server software, manages all of the uploading, downloading, and communications between the database and the 700 readers.

Because the readers are connected by an 802.11 radio network, they can query the system in real time. For example, the fork truck drivers can request a production count at any time.

Details

This system has been operating for three years now and has been rolled out to eight more locations in the US and Canada. The automated barcode data collection replaced many hours of manual work recording inventory transactions, and has eliminated shipping errors..