Lou-Rich Electronic Material Tracking Process
This past year Lou-Rich implemented an electronic material movement tracking process at the 505 Front Street location. This new process will track material movements from point A to point B. Similar to a road atlas, our plant’s location numbering scheme is based on a building location layout. The sections of the facility are defined by alpha/numeric locations along with racking and shelving within specific areas.
With our new process, material movements are scanned by a handheld device and the location is recorded into our material management software. Every time a material is moved or picked by the Lou-Rich material handlers or manufacturing personnel the material location is updated in our system. This will make it easier and faster to locate and pick materials.
Prior to this implementation, not all materials had a primary location, and anyone could physically move materials to a different location without a recorded trail of where it went. This led to confusion with material locations and caused Lou-Rich personnel to spend hours looking for material because there wasn’t an efficient way to keep track of where and who moved the material. Issues would also arise when we had overstock because materials wouldn’t fit in the recorded location and there wasn’t an efficient way to track where the overstock material was stored.
Initially, it can seem as if more time is required to track material movements with our new process. However, calculations show that employees spend less time searching for materials by implementing these changes. With the implementation of this new process Lou-Rich will have a more organized system, will be able to locate and pick items faster, which will help ensure on-time customer delivery.
