KAMAZ PTC (part of Rostec State Corporation) modernized a warehouse management system: a number of solutions made storage operations by 17% faster.
The project was launched in December 2016. Since KAMAZ boosted its production volumes, it became vital to optimize storage business processes. Thus, the goal was to enhance storage capacity in a warehouse for details to be delivered to a K4 (KAMAZ-5490 and others) cab assembly line by at least 15%. Previously, before the changes were made, the process of acceptance and placement of materials had been semi-automatic, and time-consuming operations in SAP affected subsequent business processes.
SAPRUN Company became the auto maker's partner in this project. The experts suggested some solutions to simplify and automate acceptance and placement processes, also due to excluded paper work. The key is a HyperHive mobile platform connected with Motorola 9590 data collection terminals. This April the Mobile Warehouse Management System application was completely developed for data collection terminals, functional and integration tests were conducted too. In June, the multifunctional group consisting of KAMAZ's and SAPRUN Group's experts put the application into trial operation.
The modernization made it possible to accept and place goods and materials much faster. The introduced mobile solutions replaced paper work and manual data input in SAP. As a result, the platform enabled to increase the number of storage operations by 17% per shift. It should be noted that the mobile application was introduced in a seamless integration with SAP within the shortest possible period. The major feature of the solution is that it works even in areas with a weak Wi-Fi signal.
The mobile system will show its potential in full when it's intoruced in all interwarehouse processes. They include completing and shipping of goods and materials to assembly shops, inventory operations in the warehouse. Following the results of the pilot introduction, the experts suppose that transition to the mobile system introduced in all warehouse operations will help increase storage capacity by 20-23%.