How can 1700 cabinets achieve rapid position alignment and misalignment warning?

A Zhejiang industrial automation group has 1,753 storage spaces with an area of 0.9*0.9m in its finished goods warehouse and FAT site. These large numbers of storage spaces are used for the storage and flow of cabinets. Due to the similarity and large number of cabinets, the group has been experiencing major pain points in inventory and storage area management. Therefore, in order to achieve flexible management, the group has synchronised "efficiency - cost reduction - ease of use - lean" as an entry point and used location digital technology as an entry point to achieve automated changes in inventory and storage area management.

About the group

A Zhejiang industrial automation group has been committed to meeting the industrial digitalisation needs of the process industry, based on automation control systems, focusing on the development of digitalisation-related industrial software technologies and products, forming intelligent manufacturing solutions with multi-industry characteristics to achieve efficient automated production and intelligent management of industrial enterprises. In its newly built modern plant workshops, it also focuses on building customised smart factory complexes and strives to build a leading smart factory cluster industrial park in China.

Current management pain points

(1) The number of cabinets is large and similar, making it difficult to locate them.

(2) Paper-based storage codes are easily damaged.

(3) Difficult for transport workers to enforce that they must scan the code to leave the warehouse.

(4) It is difficult to maintain tracking of information such as cabinet movement and transfer.

UWB-based solutions

In order to solve the above "neck" problem, and to ensure that the cabinet location is real-time and accurate. The group deployed UWB base stations in its finished goods warehouse and FAT yard, as well as binding location tags to each cabinet in storage. When a cabinet is placed in a designated location, the base station collects data from the location tag and transmits it to the LS1000 location engine via wired Ethernet for data analysis and processing, thus continuously obtaining the cabinet's location information. It is then transmitted to the upper-level WMS system through an open API interface, which allows the calibration of the cabinet location and subsequent alerting of the available storage position, etc.

(1) 3D visualisation management

Based on Web3D technology, the warehouse is digitally modelled to visually display the storage position information and the precise location, basic information and status of the cabinets in each area of the finished goods warehouse and FAT site.

(2) Cabinet location and information query

The UWB positioning system is bound and associated with the PDA, and the WMS system receives real-time task work orders, batch numbers and cabinet information through the interface, thus reducing the loss of information due to damage of the paper warehouse location code.

Managers can also quickly find out where cabinets are stored according to cabinet codes, cabinet names and other information, saving manpower time in manual searching.

(3) Inventory view and dynamic update

On the WMS system, you can view the number and status of cabinets stored in the finished goods store and FAT site in real time. This information will be updated in real time according to the dynamics of the cabinets in and out of storage.

(4) Multi-dimensional early warning control

Through a variety of early warning settings such as upper and lower limits for cabinet storage, cabinet storage position calibration, etc., differentiated by different colours, to reduce cabinet position misplacement and achieve First In First Out (FIFO).

In the era of industrial digitisation, healthy digital transformation is driven by value. For an industrial automation group in Zhejiang, a set of 3D visual positioning system based on UWB positioning technology, through the connection with WMS system, changes the traditional mode of manual cabinet management, quickly carries out cabinet position calibration and misplacement warning, releases the real value behind the data, improves the efficiency of storage management operations, and truly realises the cost reduction and efficiency of enterprise operation and management.