Handhelds: Out With The Old And In With The New

Delphi, a division of General Motors that produces wiring harnesses for cars, was using outdated handheld data collection terminals in its plants located throughout Mexico.

Delphi has nearly 20 plants in Mexico ranging in size from 25,000 to 50,000 square feet, each with between 400 and 500 employees. Each plant produces various wiring harnesses for General Motors, Mercedes Benz and BMW automobiles. Anything that is electrical on an automobile feeds back into a wiring harness. The company was looking for a more effective way to move, track and ship the wiring harnesses. The proprietary terminals in place were nearly a decade old and no longer provided Delphi with the inventory control it was seeking.

Problems Experienced With The Outdated Terminals

• The older data collection units were limited in the amount of data they could store and subsequently had to be downloaded quite frequently, often several times per day, into a host computer.
• They were not reliable and often suffered service problems.
• They did not have an open architecture and therefore were not upgradable to radio frequency (RF) data collection.
• They were slow when users pulled products to ship, not "catching" duplicate bar-code scans.
  
  "Delphi wanted something capable of performing complete inventory cycle counts, without having to stop and do multiple downloads," says David Edwards, president and owner of Texas Bar Code Systems, the AIDC (automatic identification and data collection) reseller who provided the solution Delphi was looking for. "They wanted more data storage and a device with an open architecture." Texas Bar Code operates out of Plano, TX with seven employees. The company expects $15 million in sales from existing and new clients by year-end.
  
  Representatives from Delphi met with Texas Bar Code Systems, which suggested Percon Falcon data collection terminals be used at the plants. The Falcon is a DOS-based portable data collection terminal featuring: 32-bit open architecture, DOS 6.22, and a user-accessible PC card slot. Delphi reps also met with direct sales reps from Intermec regarding its data-collection units. "They chose Percon primarily because it was less expensive," Edwards states. "We estimate the cost savings we provided over the Intermec bid were more than $100,000."
  
  What Was Implemented
  The Percon Falcon collects data on the plant floor. The Falcon has a scanning range of about twenty inches. The collected data is downloaded into a Percon Power Wedge 20 Decoder, which routes it into the plants' host computers. Zebra and Printronix printers produce the bar-code labels used in the plants. EDS (Electronic Data Systems), a global IT technology provider, wrote the software for the system, with all of the handheld text prompts being displayed in Spanish on the Falcon's liquid crystal display (LCD).
  
  Benefits Of The New System
• When employees are relocating materials in the warehouse they scan the bar code on the product and on a warehouse location tag, thus notifying the computer system of changes. The Falcon unit prompts the user when something has been scanned twice, thus eliminating movement errors.
• When pulling products for an order, the Falcon's LCD screen prompts the user where to pick up the product and where to put it. This makes look-ups much quicker and virtually eliminates order-picking errors.
• When employees are inventory cycle counting, the Falcon can store up to 2MB of data before having to be downloaded. This reduces the number of trips employees make to the decoder, and maximizes their efficiency.
• It has an open architecture allowing for an easy upgrade to RF or other function if the plant decides to go that route in the future. RF will provide real time transmission of information through a wireless network.
  
  Short Sales Cycle For Such A Large Order
  "The initial sale was for 120 terminals," Edwards says. "Since then we have shipped another 25 terminals. We have equipped 15 of the Delphi plants in Mexico so far and are in the process of equipping three more right now."
  
  The sales cycle, from the first demo to actually receiving the purchase order, was approximately two and a half months, according to Edwards. "It was very quick for an order of this magnitude," he asserts.
  
  Once the units were implemented, it took a training team about two days to teach plant employees how to use the new equipment. Employees have been using the handhelds for nearly a year now and have experienced a significant drop in the number of errors involved in product movements.
  
  "There are literally thousands of these automobile wiring harnesses in each plant at any given time," Edwards adds. "There are types for many different cars and they are very similar in appearance. If the wrong harness is sent out to a car manufacturer, the mistake may not be detected until the car is fully assembled. This new open architecture, handheld computer has made that type of mistake much less probable."