Smart Intralogistics Thanks To Asset Tracking 4.0

Smart Intralogistics: In the “Smart Factory” context, the optimization of material flows plays an important role: only automated material flow management enables companies to keep an eye on their intralogistics processes. Together with the system manufacturer, NTT DATA Business Solutions shows how intelligent tracking solutions can be integrated into the digital factory – and bring real added value.

Smart machine tools and digitized means of production: When “Industry 4.0” is mentioned, the aspect of material flow is often neglected. Wrongly, the topic is crucial for the success of the vision of the smart factory of the future because without the automation of material flows in networked production and logistics. The concept would be inconceivable in the long term. The sheer volume of goods movements that occur every day in warehouses and presentations makes it impossible to keep track of things with manual methods. As a result, the companies affected usually find it difficult to discover inefficient material flows, let alone foresee them and fix them in good time.

The manual booking of goods and services also represents a time and cost factor that should not be underestimated and puts an additional burden on companies. Needless to say, as the cooperation between NTT DATA Business Solutions and the industrial partner, Together, the experts from both companies show how asset tracking, i.e., the seamless location of materials and goods in the entire production and Logistics environment, can succeed – both on the shop floor and within the whole supply chain.

Smart Intralogistics: Combine Tradition With Innovation

GmbH is already in the fifth generation of developing, producing, and selling holistic solutions for everything to do with mobility. Many joint SAP projects have already been successfully implemented within the long-term business relationship that connects the signal system specialist and NTT DATA Business Solutions (formerly intelligence). The decision to expand this success story with a product solution for intelligent asset tracking was made – and led continuously from a pilot project to a fully developed solution of an automated tracking system that has been in practical use at the company since March 2021. A series of workshops marked the beginning of the pilot phase,

For NTT DATA Business Solutions, this phase also provided the opportunity to integrate all relevant stakeholders in the company – from IT to logistics and production management to the employees in the material flow themselves – in the process. This made it possible to ensure that the employees accept the system in practice in the early phase of the cooperation project and that its use corresponds to the practical requirements.

Linking Different Expertise

What is special about the practical product solution: It links asset tracking with an automated booking in the SAP backend. Via the new material flow command center, the provider of signaling and radio technology can see at any time in real-time where the respective materials, goods, and goods are in the warehouse or shop floor.  developed the “loop” system solution used to cooperate with NTT Data Business Solutions.

This consists of various hardware components such as loops. Beacons (transmitters), loops. Nodes (receivers) and circle. Edge devices, networked via a cloud-based platform, are the so-called real-time IoT software (IoT). The collected tracking data is also aggregated in this cloud. The intelligent system can prevent inefficient processes by examining and evaluating the generated information with special data analysis tools (loop. Analytics). The cloud platform and the tracking data to the SAP backend via the cloud-based tool loops. Integration. The cloud connection enables the system to be used across companies and locations.

Asset Tracking System: Complete Solution From A Single Source

The complete coordinated package can therefore be easily integrated into existing operational processes and enables many companies to implement the system without any problems. This is particularly important because even if the advantages of optimized material flow with tracking or real-time location systems (RTLS) are obvious, many companies still find it difficult to choose the right tracking solution for their operations. The multitude of available technological approaches and systems that are hidden behind abbreviations such as RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), or UWB (Ultra-wideband) make the decision even more difficult and create uncertainty.

With this in mind, the complete solution developed by NTT DATA Business Solutions is a game-changer: The one-stop asset tracking system makes handling easier and also enables additional connection to other technologies such as AI or blockchain-based technology Applications. It shows how important cooperation with strong partners and the combination of different areas of expertise are because of the increasingly complex production environment.

Thanks to the partnership between NTT DATA Business Solutions, nothing stands in the way of automated material flow management – and intelligent asset tracking has also laid an important foundation for the further development of individual production locations towards the “Smart Factory.”

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