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Customer is producer of returnable plastic packaging for material handling (plastic crats). On the shop floor they have several machines that place the molded parts directly on a conveyer belt. The belt transports the product to packaging department where the product is placed on a “carrousel”.

Employees on the packing department take the products of the carrousel and put them on a pallet. The products have no identification at this time and sometimes very similar products are produced at the same time with the result that they are not correctly labeled when the pallet is full. (the print their handling unit stickers in advance for the running shop orders). 
On a regular basis the wrong identification is placed on a pallet. 
Question from the customer: Does IFS have customers with a similar process that found a solution to prevent these kind of mistakes?

Not sure if the similar but unique products come out from the same Production line. Usually it does not happen that way.

Anyways, would like to propose a suggestion, if they are using barcodes with scanners I think if they can print another label for the Part No and stick on the crate as soon as it comes out of the Production then the Packaging guys would be able to scan and load the correct parts on the pallet. 

Hi @JOrlicky,

 

Thank you for the answer. A sticker will not be acceptable for them. They also produce for instance beer crates and they are used at the customer only after some cleaning. The brewer does not want stickers on the crates. 

Alex

Hi @Alex Crooijmans, 

What attributes of the parts are different?

  • Dimensions
  • Colors
  • Material
  • Other?

Perhaps if we know what differentiates them we could see if there would be some way to sort them?

Kind regards,

Joel

Hi @Joel Taylor ,

 

It’s depending on the product. They have several combined. 

Could be that two products are running at the same time that only have a difference in height, color/material, or a combination. For some products there are also very small variances in their appearance but these products do not run at the same time in general.

BTW: I was asked to present this case at the “Monthly Manufacturing and Engineering Functional Competency/Knowledge Share Meeting” on September 19th 2022. Let’s see what happens there. 

Regards,

Alex.

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