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Finding new approaches in material supply

Real-time locating enables flexible production models

Finding new approaches in material supply

Real-time locating enables flexible production models

Electrical & Electronic (E&E)

Siemens AG

Siemens Electronics Factory, Fürth, Germany

Fürth,

Modern Industrie 4.0 production.
Wide range of products to be produced - from sophisticated industrial electronics to engineering-based systems, therefore the nature of the business here is with low volume per type, high product mix, volatile demands and no repeat aspect.
Components are transported in black boxes from a central warehouse to distribution stations, finished goods to shipping department. What´s more, about 2,500 boxes with new content are coming in every day.
Accompanying documents made the boxes hardly distinguishable “at a glance”.
A lot of time spent on searching caused many activities non-productive.

We needed system which:

SIMATIC RTLS based on UWB consists of:

Transponders SIMATIC RTLS4083T with paper ink display. Transponders are attached to the moving objects, such as boxes, components, goods, products, etc. and used for position detection.
RTLS Gateways which are linked via a separate Industrial Ethernet network.
Locating Manager which collects data from gateways via SCALANCE XM400 switches, calculates and transmits the coordinates to the target systems for display to employees.

Further software components:

“Location Intelligence“ connects the locating data from SIMATIC RTLS with the business processes in the production.
Route planning and synchronized control over AGVs as a next step.

The real-time locating by SIMATIC RTLS thus represents a key to higher productivity and flexibility.

Lorenz Rappl, Factory manager, Fürth

Unceasing information about the location of the boxes and how long they have been in production and therefore less time spent on searching and obvious improvement of throughput times.
Possibility to view the positions of all boxes belonging to a particular order with a positioning accuracy in the centimeter range.
No need of printed accompanying documents thanks to ePaper transponders.
Faster response to product changes.
Return of investment in less than two years.

ID: 19690