Ballard Streamlines Manufacturing Process in the Cloud

In order to meet customer expectations by supplying a wide variety of packaging units, from 36 to 1000 spoons per package, a new production and packaging line needed to be built. DeSter wanted to achieve higher production capacity, lower cycle time and a high degree of operator friendliness with this new production line.

Injection Technology (Itech) is a custom molder for a variety of clients that require precision plastic parts for such products as electric meter covers, dental appliance cases and spools. With 95 employees operating 23 molding machines in a 30,000 square foot plant, Itech wanted to reduce man hours and increase efficiency.

Tofflon has developed a fully automatic machine that uses light to inspect vials, medicine bottles, or infusion containers for glass fragments, aluminum particles, rubber grains, hairs, fibers, or other contaminants. It also detects damaged containers with cracks or inclusions (microscopic imperfections), automatically removing faulty or contaminated products. In order to cover all production processes for freeze-dried pharmaceuticals, Tofflon needed to create an open, consistent, and module-based automation concept.

The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.

Most of the customer's warehouses run on utility and generator power. Since these warehouses are in remote locations, power outages are a very common scenario. Diesel fuel, thereby, becomes a significant cost for these warehouses. Energy consumption was also very high due to the lack of a consistent temperature throughout the facility. This lack of a consistent temperature in all areas and no way to control it, resulted in the customer losing a significant amount of their temperature sensitive goods due to spoilage.

SML Intelligent Inventory's customers, some retail and supply chain businesses wanted a cost-efficient way to improve their inventory management so that they can increase their revenue.