Huf Portuguesa is a subsidiary (50% owned) of the Huf Hülsbeck & FürstGroup. Huf produces and develops mechanical and electronic key systems, lock sets, steering locks and remote control systems for the automotive industry.

Today, Huf has approx. 4,500 employees located in 12 countries worldwide. More than 200 designers and technicians working in the offices in Velbert and Günding (Germany), in Milwaukee (USA) and in Chonan (Korea) are engaged in research and development. Kanban is a signaling system to trigger action. As the name suggests, kanban historically uses cards to signal the need for an item. However, other devices such as plastic markers (kanban squares) or balls (often golf balls) or an empty part-transport trolley or floor location can also be used to trigger the movement, production or replenishment of a unit in a factory. An important key to the success of "push" production scheduling is the quality of the demand forecast which provides the "push". Kanban, by contrast, is part of a pull system that determines the replenishment or production, according to the actual demand of the customers.

INDUSTRY • Manufacturing KEY BENEFITS • Visual Management of pending & “out of stock” requests • Collect Knowledge about raw material flows • Replenishment prioritization through several algorithms • Decrease replenishment time • Decrease assembly line stock levels • Decrease picking times XPAND IT SERVICES & SOLUTIONS • XPS - Xpand IT Professional Services

Problem & Challenge

At this stage, Huf identified that the presence of a somehow automated system that helped to plan and identify the needs of assembly line parts, could lead to an efficiency increase in what concerns to people’s productivity and stock management. A system with these and other important characteristics could also help to improve the communication model between workers when urgent assembly line replenishment was needed.

The main goal now was to implement an IT system that would improve assembly line and warehouse workers overall communication. This way Huf was sure that the efficiency of the whole replenishment and parts flows would indeed be increased.

• Delays or missing parts replenishment to assembly lines • Difficulties in human resource management due to floating peaks in assembly line replenishment • Lack of control of pending raw material requests

• Missing information regarding routes that would be used to optimize the replenishment process • The impossibility to implement optimized routes and the use of several picking types • No systematic process defined and based in worker’s tacit knowledge

 

Problem's dimension can be determined through several metrics:

• Transportation capacity of forklifts • Supplyment frequency to assembly lines • Time spent in every replenishment • Time spent while searching for parts in warehouse

• Number of warehouse workers • Number of replenishments • Number of supplied (raw material) parts • Number of existing manual kanban boxes

 

The Solution

The project’s main goal was to develop a solution that along with some business rules implementation and with the high availability
and performance requirements fulfillment, could indeed improve assembly line replenishment flows.

 

WHERE EVERYTHING STARTS: THE KIOSK SOLUTION
All assembly line part requests are made using one of the Symbol MK2200 kiosks available. Using C# and .Net technology, along with Symbol’s Mobile Development Kit, Xpand IT developed the Kiosk interface, an application that simplifies the process of reading parts labels. Assembly line workers pass the parts labels in front of the scanner, and the Kiosk application does the rest: it automatically fills the required form fields eliminating the burden from workers that can now fully concentrate on the assemble operation. Also, using the physical buttons, users can control each request’s urgency.

 

WAREHOUSE WORKERS MOBILE APPLICATION
Warehouse workers are always on the run, and so does the mobile application developed by Xpand IT. The Kanban mobile application is installed in each worker’s portable Symbol device (the MC9060) and notifies them of new assembly line requests or even alerts when stock is low. Warehouse workers
can also confirm or cancel parts replenishments. Using Web Services technology in a distributed server environment, all these operations were seamlessly integrated with Huf’s ERP infrastructures, so that stock values can be updated in a coherent and ordered way.

 

ADMINISTRATION PORTAL INTERFACE
To provide HUF with powerful administration and monitoring capabilities on their new electronic Kanban, a web portal interface was developed by Xpand IT. Built on top on the JBoss Portal solution, the new administration portal allows users to create, update and delete assembly line requests. The Kanban
portal application can also display alerts about important stock events that might require immediate attention and since it is tightly integrated with HUF’s ERP system, users can search for requests based on a given criteria, allowing instant access to vital information.

 

Standards & Technologies

• Application server - JBoss Portal

• Database server - MySql

• eKanban clients
  • Web client - EJB 3.0, J2EE,Struts 2
  • Mobile clients - .Net Compact Framework
  • Windows Mobile 5 - Symbol MC9060
  • Windows CE 4.2 - Symbol MK2250
• Integration with BPCS ERP running on IBM AS400

 

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