Shop Floor Mobile Inventory and Labor Transactions
Mickey Truck Bodies (Mickey) manufactures all-aluminum beverage bodies and beverage trailers, dry freight, and refrigerated van bodies, emergency vehicles and specially engineered equipment for customers throughout the U.S. and more than 50 other countries. The company operates a national network of full-service Reconditioning/Service Centers and a complete Parts Shop with genuine Mickey Parts as well as parts for most competitive makes and models.
With 6 facilities and over 300 manufacturing employees, the sheer cost of licensing and hardware, as well as the volume of transactions recorded on the shop floor, presented a challenge for Mickey. The solution? SaberLogic’s Bezlio! Bezlio offers a flexible interface to Epicor using Bezls that provide the ability to add key features without significant expense. In addition, they are able to use the Bezls from anywhere in their shop, even where WiFi may be spotty.
Real-Time Inventory Transfer App
To increase efficiency, Mickey desired an inventory transfer solution to enable users to issue multiple materials to a job from mobile devices. The screen below shows the Bezl created. The user begins the process by entering their employee ID, and then inputs the job and optionally the assembly/operation. A list of buttons is presented per the material requirements. Inventory on hand is displayed, and the user can tap or scan the barcode of the warehouse/bin they wish to pull from, indicate the quantity, and move on to the next material. When all inventory selections are specified, the user clicks the 'Issue Materials' button, and all transactions are processed in real time.
Production Labor Transactions on Mobile Devices
Another Bezl allows the ability to track production transactions from mobile devices. Users can clock in, clock out, start/stop production activities, and start/stop indirect activities. As shown below, the end activity screen for production activities allows for the input of completed quantities as well as scrap. When clocked into a production activity with attachments defined at the job level, such as an Assembly Guide, they are presented as buttons that can be tapped to display in a built-in PDF viewer.
Bezlio is a cost-effective solution for using mobile devices to efficiently capture and record shop floor data real time. Because Mickey has multiple facilities utilizing Epicor, there is a huge saving on MES user licenses and workstation hardware costs, estimating between $80,000 - $90,000. In addition, transactions from all locations are streamlined and controlled, making data entry and collection easier while simultaneously enforcing critical business rules.
Case Study by Sherry Dula at Encompass Solutions