technology that powers
Supply chain operations
Supply Chain Technology
Supply Chain Technology is used for gathering data accurately with minimal manual intervention during the various activities of supply chain processes. Whether it is for collection of the picking data within in the warehouse or GPS information the transit or labor tracking data on the manufacturing shop floor, technology plays a very critical role of capturing and feeding of vital information into the business applications such as Warehouse Management, Transport Management, Work in Process, among others.
For any supply chain process automation, the first step of identifying the right process is followed by use of optimal technology. At Quinta, we firmly believe in “problem first” approach where the technology becomes incidental rather than force fitting the technology into solving problems. This is done keeping the RoI of the entire solution in mind.
RFID in Supply Chain
Among all the other technologies in the supply chain, RFID has been the most hyped and experimented by companies worldwide. Though the technology itself is proven, the trick lies in identification of the right processes to automate uusing RFID and justifying the investment. RFID has always been companied with its more economical predeccessor and has suffered.
The prices of the RFID tags have come down significantly and the accuracy/efficiencies of the RFID Readers have improved over the years. This economics has helped adoption by many companies to automate the data capture in many of their supply chain processes.
Advantages
RFID does not need the line of sight for reading.
No manual intervention is required in case of a fixed reader setup.
RFID Tag can store more data than a conventional 1D Barcode.
Limitations
RF read range gets affected in liquid and metallic ambient environments.
Reading infrastructure and tags is expensive.
For high volume and low cost products, the RoI might not be justified
RFID in Manufacturing
Work in Process Tracking.
RFID in Logistics/Warehousing
Returnable Trolley Tracking using Active RFID.
Item level tracking through the Supply Chain.
how can we help
RFID use case Identification and Business Case Evaluation.
RFID Infrastructure – Readers, Antennas, Tags, Portals.
RFID Integration with Business Applications (e.g. ERP, Asset
Management, WMS)
Barcode in Supply Chain
Barcode is the oldest and widely adopted supply chain technology across various industry verticals of Manufacturing, Logistics, and Retail among others. Barcode technology’s biggest USP is that it is extremely cost effective to print labels and paste it on items and assets that need tracking. Right from apparels to couriers and IT assets all of them use Barcode of one symbology or the other. Barcode ensures that the manual data entry errors.
Advantages
Easy to deploy and read.
No complex integration effort required with the host applications.
Limitations
Susceptible to wear and tear that might make the barcode unreadable.
Barcode in Manufacturing
Traceability application of components on Shopfloor Labor Productivity tracking.
Barcode in Logistics/Warehousing
Automation of the Warehouse processes such as Putaway, Picking Inbound and Outbound Capture.
how can we help
Design of the entire solution using Barcode as base Technology.
Barcode Infrastructure – Rugged Mobile Computers, Labels and
Label Printers, Scanners
Beacons in Supply Chain
Advantages
Economical Reading infrastructure.
Good reading range upto 50 mtrs.
Range is programmable too.
Limitations
frequency and range programmed
Beacons for Security
Asset Tracking on the shop floor.
Beacons in Logistics/Warehousing
Returnable Trolley Tracking
how can we help
Design of the entire solution using Beacon as base Technology.
Identifying the right Beacon Hardware and programming the frequency and range.
Custom Internet of Things (IoT) Devices
Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that is gaining traction as an effective technology backbone of many a Supply Chain Process Automation Projects. Custom developed IoT hardware are very useful for leveraging the power of the new age M2M Communication Platform – NBIoT to transmit and store information from the various sensors at a very low cost and battery for generating multiple business insights. The critical part of such an exercise is to find the use case where the insights generated by the immense data can add business value – save money or identify areas for efficiency improvement or enhance customer delight.
Advantages
Custom IoT cost effective at a high volume.
Real data leading to real insights.
Limitations
Time to market is high (Pilot, PoC and Full Scale deployment).
Cloud costs for huge data storage will be Opex.
IoT in Manufacturing
Asset Maintenance and Tracking.
IoT in Logistics/Warehousing
Real time data of items during transit.
(e.g. Temperature of Ice-creams during transit)
Route Optimization using GPS.
how can we help
Identification of the right hardware platform and establishing the PoC.
Deployment and Maintenance of the entire solution/project
Get more information about Supply Chain Technology.