Shopfloor-Online Warehouse Management System and RFID Integration boosts Vita group efficiencies

Vita Group is a global producer of foam products, for the bedding, furniture and flooring markets, as well as the aerospace and automotive industries, with 30 manufacturing plants worldwide.

At their Manchester plant, Vita were facing increased pressure on warehouse management systems from business growth and product expansion that left strains, causing the system to begin to fail. To maintain the high standard of customer service Vita expects of itself, a review of production-to-stock control systems was initiated to find a solution.

Challenges: To improve stock visibility and customer satisfaction

Vita used Epicor®, iScala® ERP, custom spreadsheets and a paper-based system to manage the Warehouse, however, poor stock visibility started to impact on on-time-deliveries and the right product being sent to the right customer.

Nick, the Operations Director and his team identified vital stock information was not flowing efficiently and avoidable mistakes were taking place. They determined that RFID tagging, and a full warehouse management system were needed to fully digitise the data flow to and from the ERP software.

After meeting with Lighthouse Systems, Vita came to the conclusion that a full manufacturing execution system capable of scaling with production growth and able to address wider requirements, would be the ultimate solution for the Vita Group.

Solution: Shopfloor-Online™ MES

Shopfloor-Online brings transformational responsiveness to Vita’s Supply Chain.

Shopfloor-Online Warehouse Management tightly integrates with Vita’s ERP to provide full visibility of the product at all stages until delivery to the customer. The MES software knows precisely what is in stock and where to find it at any given time and who prepared the work order.

What Warehouse Management System and RFID Integration does?

Each foam block receives an RFID identification tag that stores the stock keeping unit (SKU) number and date of manufacture as a unique identifier. Work orders and sales details are shared by the ERP with Shopfloor-Online.

As blocks enter the warehouse, Shopfloor-Online assigns a store location to each block, which warehouse operatives can see on their handheld devices.

Customer orders are sent to Shopfloor-Online MES / MOM software which generates a pick list for available blocks. With information of which blocks are in stock, the software calculates the quickest route and the order is prepared for timely dispatch. The blocks are assigned labels “in progress” or “complete” and as soon as the block is in the delivery truck, the customer is notified by email.

“The WMS in Manchester is serving as the master template for rollouts progressing at other Vita Group plants" concluded Nick Wood.

Key benefits?

Deploying Shopfloor-Online™ has delivered bottom-line benefits:

• Full traceability recording
• Real-time data
• No longer missing delivery times
• Customers always receive the right product