Case Study - Delphi

A fully-traceable document and barcode scanning audit trail provided by Datalogic Scanning products and TPL Labels. Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including automotive powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls & security systems, electrical/electronic architecture, and in-car entertainment technologies. Engineered to meet and exceed the very rigorous standards of the automotive industry, all Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer electronics, energy and medical applications.

Delphi has approximately 171,000 employees and operates 159 manufacturing sites in 36 countries with sales of $26.4 billion in 2006. Supplying advanced suspension automotive systems to an Oxford based major car manufacturer, Delphi Automotive Systems ensures the right components are supplied to the assembly line in the right sequence as they are needed.

The Challenge: As a direct result of lean manufacturing initiatives designed to reduce assembly costs, automotive manufacturers require their suppliers to provide just-in-time deliveries of pre-assembled systems directly to their production lines.

Delphi Automotive Systems delivers multiple, small batches of suspension systems as they are needed. This means the automotive manufacturer can minimize inventory levels and improve the operational efficiency. What’s more, Delphi must deliver their automotive suspension systems in the correct assembly sequence, as each new vehicle is built-to-customer order, possessing its own unique build specifications, rather than built-to-stock. In fact, out of every 1,000,000 cars that roll off the production line only 10 will be identical.

The Solution: To successfully meet the challenge of always supplying in assembly line sequence the correct suspension module on each corner of the vehicle for over 5200 vehicles a week Delphi designed an innovative picking process.

Working in partnership with TPL Labels Ltd, a UK specialist provider of custom labels, auto-identification and data capture solutions, Delphi reorganised its shop floor into specific lanes designated by the final destination of all the suspension module on the vehicle: front-left, front-right, rear-left, rear-right.

Jim Allen, Operations Manager, explained: “We were tasked to deliver suspension modules in sequence to our customer’s production line. We needed to have a very robust and reliable error-proofing system that ensured our customer would be consistently supported, and protect Delphi with a fully traceable document and barcode scanning audit trail.

“Together TPL Labels Ltd. and Delphi constructed the architecture of the error-proofing and Datalogic provided all of the hardware and integration. Datalogic was selected as the hardware provider for this project because of its excellent market reputation for quality, reliability and project management.”

Case Study - The 13th Estoril Open tennis tournament

The 13th Estoril Open tennis tournament, which is also the biggest Portuguese tennis tournament, took place on the 10th to 18th April 2004 in the “Courts de Jamor” of the Estadio Nacional, bringing together the world’s best clay court players to participate in the tournament.

According to the organisers a total of 33,212 spectators turned up to the tennis complex this year. Not even the adverse weather conditions, which included intense rainfall, scorching sun and strong winds, were sufficient to de-motivate the international public who participated in this event with great enthusiasm.

In order for such an event to be successful, every aspect of the organisation must be well co-ordinated. To achieve this, behind the scenes, the complete IT system and in particular the control of the entrances was the responsibility of Cartosis, a company specialised in the production of passes and solutions for security systems. For this event, Cartosis developed a specific software according to the client needs, to control the access to the box seats and courts, as well as the entrances to the VIP lounge which was reserved exclusively for guests.

The solution was based on the use of the new Heron™ hand-held readers from Datalogic supplied by Identisis-Sistemas de Identificação Automática, a Datalogic Quality Partner in Portugal. The high performance reader for instinctive reading features the Datalogic patented green-spot to easily position the code for good read feedback. It reads both standard linear codes and RSS at a rate of 256 scans/sec, with full connectivity to the most common interfaces (USB, serial, wedge, wand, IBM and TTL).

The Heron™ bar code readers were used to read the bar codes printed on the entrance tickets of the guests, and were connected directly to a PC, for validation of the tickets, eliminating the need for bi-directional validation. The complete solution presented by Cartosis was very practical, rapid and efficient, as it avoided the formation of queues despite the considerable influx of spectators.

The 13th Estoril Open tournament was an all round success, with the help of advanced technology in the field of automatic identification, and it stood out for the feat achieved by the Argentinean winner Juan Ignacio Chela, who was the first player to win singles and doubles at the same tournament on the ATP circuit this year, and the second to achieve this feat in Estoril since 1990.