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And when a shipment goes wrong, it can seriously disrupt thecustomer s manufacturing operations: the just-in-time processescommonly employed today allow very little margin for error, and onemissed shipment can halt an entire production line. Supply-chainfailures therefore cost the customer money; minimizing the risk ofsuch failure should be an important goal for OEM productionexecutives. The biggest source of failure of all is non-availability of thepart that the customer wants, and so investment in inventory, andeffective inventory profiling and management, are crucialrequirements of an effective supply chain. But assuming that therequired part is held in stock at the distribution centre, by farthe most common source of error in the supply chain is the usualsuspect: people. So when Future Electronics built its new distribution centre forEurope, the Middle East and Africa (known as the EMEA DC) in 2010,its strategy was to automate almost every process from the moment acomponent arrives at Goods In to its departure from the centre inthe back of a lorry. However, experience shows the human element in a logistics facilitycannot be eliminated entirely, and the training and education ofthe distribution workforce is an important element of a zero-defectsupply chain. The 15,000m2 EMEA DC in Leipzig, Germany replaced an older facilityin Hayes, UK in June 2010. The Hayes DC was run on largely manualprocesses, with a relatively small amount of automation equipment,mostly for packaging and labelling customer shipments. When component manufacturers shipped components to Hayes, staffprocessed and sorted the incoming shipments and placed them on theshelves in marked locations. When a customer order came in, thestaff also retrieved parts manually from these shelves. But humans make mistakes when executing repetitive logicalprocesses: as a result, Future Electronics had to maintain largeQuality Assurance (QA) teams to check processed orders, and tocorrect mistakes in outbound packages before dispatch to thecustomer. The EMEA DC has eliminated all such sources of error by using asophisticated ASRS (Automated Storage and Retrieval System) to domost of the work that staff used to do. Incoming shipments arecharacterised by means of barcode scanners. Once logged as stock bythe inventory system, incoming parts are conveyed for storage to arobotic dark warehouse'. The storage area is kept dark because the ASRS, not people, picksand places totes [plastic boxes which each hold units of a singlepart number] at the 285,000 locations in the 18m-high, 100m-longstorage racks. When a customer order comes in, the ASRS picks theright combination of parts, and conveys them to a packing station. The system never forgets where it put a part, and unlike a human,it never picks the wrong part or goes to the wrong storagelocation. At the packing station, human operators take the required parts inthe correct quantity from the totes conveyed to them. These partsare then passed to a second station where they are checked, andthen packed in the optimum number of cartons to ensure 100% qualitycontrol (QC). Here again, the risk of human error is almost completelyeliminated: a computer programme gives simple step-by-stepinstructions to the operator, and requires an operator input tonotify it when each step is successfully completed. All human operations in the EMEA DC are computer-assisted in thisway. But the computer assistance would not work unless theoperators understood the computer instructions and accepted theimportance of implementing error-free processes. An average of 72 hours of training per person in the first year ofthe EMEA DC s operation (training which is continually refreshedand extended) is regarded as an essential element of the success ofthe new facility. The QC process, which checks all shipments for accuracy beforerelease to the customer, is now showing that the combination ofautomation taken to the extreme, combined with computer assistanceto skilled personnel, can succeed in completely eliminating errorsfrom the supply chain. Supply chain reliability is measured on amonthly basis, and in three months in 2011 there were absolutelyzero shipment errors attributable to the EMEA DC. The centre ships on average around 7,000 packages per day and hasachieved a staggeringly low average error rate of 55.5 lines permillion (LPM) over its almost two years of operation figureswhich Future Electronics could only have dreamed of beforecommissioning the new centre. The high standard of reliability at the EMEA DC is confirmed by itscompliance with recognised standards such as ISO9001 and its AEO(Authorised Economic Operator) certificate. Customers have alsoendorsed the facility, with automotive product manufacturerStoneridge, for example, awarding the EMEA DC its highest everapproval rating for Future Electronics after the opening of thefacility. More can still be done to improve the EMEA DC, for instance bystreamlining processes to improve the speed of receiving goods, inorder to fulfil customers orders more quickly. But even as things stand, the Future Electronics experience isproof of how much investment (the EMEA DC cost 50m) and effort isrequired to achieve merely what the customer expects: theirshipment, correct and on time, every time. It is deceptively hardto do, and it is a rare distributor which succeeds in it all thetime. It is common today for an OEM or CEM to prefer one distributor overanother because of superior design support, better availability ofrequired parts, or lower pricing. In fact, a commonly overlookedsource of competitive advantage is a high-functioning supply chain something which the best distributors are able to provide, butwhich is not guaranteed from all. I am an expert from weldflange.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Pipe Blind Flange , Elbow Carbon Steel Manufacturer, Pipe Blind Flange,and more.
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