Data collection in factories is not without its environmental challenges. Software is one thing, hardware is another!
This customer received architectural drawings in AutoCAD showing mosaics of tiles to be manufactured, each with its own unique code, for the cladding of office towers in Europe, Asia and the USA.
Each of these granite tiles covered a specific area of the office courtyard, and none could fail to arrive at its destination. However, there were often disputes with customers who broke the tiles on site and claimed they hadn't been delivered, so as not to pay for the replacements that had been rushed in.
With each shipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, we were asked to develop software that would track each tile to its destination, count it electronically as it left the ship, and print a bill of lading for the customer to sign.
In addition, clones of the tiles positioned at street level were to be kept in an outdoor warehouse, near the customer's factory, for comparable ageing, ready to be used as spare parts in the event of a vehicle colliding with the office tower.
OUR ROLE
Our brief was to identify an identification technology compatible with the granite constantly watered in production and exposed to the elements, and to develop the software enabling each tile to be traced in real time in the factory, in the outdoor warehouse and, of course, during the several-week journey by boat to produce proof of receipt.
The customer saved 110,000$ annually in avoided disputes thanks to the evidence provided by our system. Instead of constantly having to replace tiles free of charge that had supposedly not been received at destination, he received additional, invoiced and urgent orders for the manufacture of replacement tiles for those broken on site: the previous expense had become income.
