The central warehouse of BASF Caojing is located in Shanghai Jinshan Chemical Industry Zone. It serves seven production sites of BASF Caojing base and is an important storage and logistics base for BASF Caojing. The Class C warehouse with an area of nearly 11,000 square meters has both shuttle and beam racks, and stores both raw materials and finished products of multiple production sites, and the management requirements are complicated.

 

Thingple’s RFID-based lab management solution solves the above pain points by deploying RFID tagging of chemicals, blue-tooth locks, weighing platform and a SAAS platform that authorizes opening and closing of locks, accurately record when, who, what chemical and how much of chemical use.

 

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Under the general trend of digitalization, modern warehouse management is also ushering in digital transformation. The management of BASF's Caojing Central Warehouse wanted to use IT technology to reduce manual involvement while enhancing warehouse usage, inventory turnover rate, and ensuring warehouse data is always timely and accurate.

 

Recognizing that the digitization of assets and the automatic identification of digital assets is the foundation of warehouse management specifically in intelligent operation, visualization, precision, and digitization. BASF's supply chain and information service platform in Greater China collaborated with Thingple to launch a WMS system based on ultra-high frequency RFID tags in 2020. By providing a unique identity to each pallet and each storage site, and automatically reading it when receiving, loading, unloading, and shipping, for example, the following goals were achieved:

 

• Timely and accurate registration of cargo information in-and-out of the warehouse to reduce errors caused by manual operations

• Use the forklift to guide the loading and unloading operations to simplify operations and improve work efficiency

• The storage information is visible, transparent, and real-time, which is convenient for analysis and decision-making

• Intelligently recommend storage locations through software to improve storage utilization

 

Intelligent operation: The Thingple intelligent storage system analyzes and recommends the ideal storage site and unloading order, optimizes the operation link, and efficiently avoids the generation of sluggish materials and the deterioration of material. At the same time, it avoids overproduction and encourages a quantifiable and consistent volume, which is better for tracking product quality.

 

Visualization: Through a Kanban board, the system visualizes warehouse from both an overall and detailed perspective. The number of available and used pallets in each warehouse, the number of pallets in-and-out each day,, each month for each BU are all displayed in real time. In terms of details, it is down to how many pallets are placed in each storage location, the goods placed on the pallets belong to which business unit, the name of the goods, the batch number, and the weight.

 

Precision: Thingple system guarantees accuracy through technical means in each operation link and reduces manual operations. For example, in the delivery process, the system adds error detection functions at each node from entry to loading and delivery. In the entry step, the electronic stocking list is imported and automatically processed to reduce the probability of manual input errors. In the picking step, every time the picks up an item, the system will prompt in real time whether the picking is correct. In the review step, the system automatically identifies and counts whether the weight and number of specific materials are consistent with the requirements. During the loading and delivery process, RFID tags of the pallets are scanned to check whether the number of pallets is correct. 

 

Furthermore, Thingple's RFID inventory system dramatically improved inventory efficiency: RFID readers are placed on shuttle car and as the shuttle car moves thorough the shelfs, the inventory is done in minutes.

 

Digitization: The system automatically calculates and generates more than 20 reports in three categories, including daily inventory reports, monthly expense reports, and monthly operating reports. These reports are used for real-time inventory management, expense settlement basis and operational decision-making reference, which greatly saves the need for manual statistics. 

 

Next, the Thingple RFID-WMS system will be implemented at other warehouses on-site, so that greater benefits can be realized in the logistics operation as goods are transported between warehouses. 

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