The Mobile Asset Business Problem

This Tier 1 Automotive supplier has over 20,000 returnable stainless steel paint containers (totes) ranging in size from 100 to 1,000 gallons. These totes are part of a continental North American supply chain that flows from five manufacturing facilities to internal distribution centers, and then on to one of hundreds of customer locations, including 24 VMI sites located in major automobile assembly plants. The return process is via one of five designated cleaning and maintenance facilities and then back to any number of the manufacturing plants.

Prior to implementation of the solution with Tacit Solutions, this Tier 1 manufacturer had several critical operational issues. A capital investment in the tens of millions of dollars had been made to initially purchase the paint totes, yet there was no mechanism in place to identify the location or status of these valuable assets and to insure prompt or proven return by their customers. Additional paint totes were constantly being purchased to sustain required inventory levels.

Additionally, during the manufacturing process, a clean tote of the proper configuration and status becomes a part of the bill of materials. Without tote visibility, valuable production assets were often locked up while efforts were made to find the correct tote(s) into which the finished goods could be loaded. Configuration and status issues included: ensuring that each tote had a current DOT pressure test date; that there was no maintenance hold on the tote: and if the product required a dedicated tote, that the tote was part of the set.

Customer Realizes Tremendous Return on Investment

In 1996, Tacit Solutions implemented an Enterprise-wide solution that provides real-time visibility into this Tier 1’s returnable container inventory. This system, which uses bar codes, ruggedized hand-held computers and wireless technology, is interfaced with the Corporate ERP system and provides instant visibility to all totes throughout North America. The following economic and operational benefits have been realized:

• Returnable container location is known at all times. If totes are overdue, lost, abused, or returned containing unknown substances (assumed to be hazardous waste), appropriate action is taken.
  
• Tote loss has been dramatically cut, greatly improving use of working capital for other projects.
  
• Totes can be truly viewed as enterprise assets that are moved from plant to plant based on need and planning projections. Each facility has the status and configuration of all totes, not just their own.
  
• Tote visibility has significantly improved the manufacturing process by aligning container inventory availability with manufacturing production.
  
• DOT compliance testing and record keeping, which is a periodic requirement for each container, has been streamlined, ensuring that pressure testing standards are met and worker productivity is increased.
  
• Maintenance history and records are now data-based and available across the enterprise.