05.10.2010

Nolte kitchens - logident, RDL 90, RDL 150

Nolte kitchen relies on RFID and achieve a smooth flow of materials

Nolte kitchens is the second largest kitchen brand in Germany. The focus on a consistent corporate philosophy has made Nolte kitchens to a powerful, innovative companies since its establishment in 1958. The company with 1,100 employees is for kitchens with high quality standards, designed and produced in Germany. Every day approx. 700 individually ready made kitchens are produced.Nolte kitchens stands for innovationIt is anew every year target of the company to screw up continue standards with useful innovations. Kitchens made to measure arise on a total production area of 85,000 square meters. The material quantities which be moved between the production area Löhne and Melle is enormous. To optimize these material movements, the company Nolte kitchen GmbH & Co. KG decided for the automation of these processes in 2005. The goal was to automatically link the production lines to the high-bay warehouse and archieve the automatic truck loading from the high-bay warehouse. The decision fell on RFID transponders because in comparison to the barcode they are more robust, don't break, can be hidden in the loading equipment and are also suitable for the storage and retrieval of goods flow. With bar codes, which always must be affixed visible, these operations would have been required three times as long to read the data. The RFID experts honestly pointed out possible errors and provided Nolte kitchen with the RDL 150 and the RDL 90 devices that were easy to install with its easy-trim function. "It worked perfectly from the start," says Dirk Rottenberger, responsible for the process data sheets from Nolte kitchen. "The easy commissioning of the equipment and the service of deister electronic have convinced us. Since the commissioning five years ago we did not have a single failure. The reading rate is 99.99 percent. People rely on the clean outbooking and inbooking."

Daily 500-600 stack corpus- and front- material will be in- and out-stored. The pallets storage and retrieval carried out fully automatically on conveyor belts, no longer by forklifts. Thereby several stacked pallets can be identify and recorded with the 13.56 MHz technology in the same bunch. 13.56 MHz has met all requirements: Anti-collision is supported, the antenna is easily adjustable and the transponder has a worldwide unique identification number.

As the transponder comes into the palette?
As loading equipment flat wooden pallets are used. Means of a hole into the middle of the palette is used here, depending a rugged transponder from epoxy with a diameter of 30 mm. The hole is sealed with a knothole plug. On placement points, the stack information from the PPS system are married to the transponder.An extension or expansion of existing goods stations is not necessary since they are used due to automation in time and space perfectly. The sorting station in Melle is relatively small. There are 400-500 pallets back and forth sort daily. Due to the fully automatic infrastructure the material stock could be reduced considerably. Through teh use of transponders it is just traceable where which racks are. In addition, the requirement that the transport containers are cleaned after five-time use, is implemented without additional overhead.

Material tracking throughout the supply chain
Meanwhile suppliers of Nolte kitchen also use the proven RFID technology. Thus only a defined sequence is delivered, the inventories are reduced and all necessary parts are "just-in-time" exists. Every reader will depend on a WLAN adapter. The data read are immediately apparent in the PC. About a production manage software is the coordination between the various locations and suppliers is perfectly controlled, recorded and traceable. So the material flows are innovative and cost effective.

All the benefits at a glance:

• Inspection of loading equipment
• Reduction of stocks in picking warehouses
• Fast loading and unloading of trucks
• Maintenance-free AutoID
• Material tracking throughout the supply chain
• Extension to external suppliers
• Transmission delivery data with EDI
• Automatic goods issue posting in SAP at suppliers