Things Inside of Things, Inside of Things

 

Written by: Joe Cogan, CPO, Real Time Intelligence

 

A core element of what we aim to do at RTI is make keeping track of your “things” easy.

Whether you need to know what you have, where they are located, or when they were moved, finding those answers shouldn’t take you hours to figure out. Because in many cases, by the time you get those answers, they are no longer accurate.

And, the more “things” you have, the harder it is for you to keep track of all the continuously changing information.

 

 

With RTI’s eP360 software and strategically placed sensor-technology, we can do that for you. All of your “things” can be tracked as they move throughout your entire supply chain—autonomously. All you have to do is login, and with a few clicks, see item-level traceability and real-time answers to all your questions.

Here’s where eP360 really shines, though. Yes, we can track the things you care about—those cardboard cartons, reusable packaging containers, and tools—we’ve been doing that for a long time. But, we can also track the things inside of the things you care about.

You can have the ability to track the things inside of the things, in a very flexible way. We can track those Nike Air Jordans inside of a box, inside of a carton, that is inside of a case, that is on a pallet.

We can even track CPGs, ingredients, and raw materials. Take lemons for example, we can track 100 individual lemons that have been placed into an RPC by the grower and follow it to the manufacturer. Once there, we can use 40 of the 100 lemons and transform them into lemonade—which we also can track.

 

 

Ok, but how is this information useful? If you know one piece of information, then you can see where it was at different points in time. As they move and transform, and become part of larger things, all that information becomes readily available.

For example, your line is in jeopardy of shutting down if you can’t find more of part XYZ. If you know you are looking for part XYZ, by association eP360 can tell you what container type houses that part, if any of those containers are nearby, how many of part XYZ are in those containers, and even how long they have been sitting there.

Within minutes you find the container and, therefore, find the 100 subassemblies inside that you were looking for, and production keeps moving.

But what caused that part shortage? Maybe you ordered 500 and only 400 came. With eP360 you can verify shipments too. When trucks are unloaded you can get an alert when an order that is pulled off the truck is short. Actually, your suppler can get a notification when the truck is being loaded that everything is accounted for and is ready to ship. No more mis-ships for suppliers. No more surprises for you.

What about food recalls? If you know that there was an issue with cut-up watermelon on line 5 between 9:08AM and 4:43PM on January 13^th, then you have the data that tells you what products came off the line that were affected. You know what cartons watermelon from that specific timeframe was packaged in, what returnable containers they were stored in, what trucks shipped those containers, to what stores, and on which dates. By having all of that information with item-level traceability, you can narrow down the amount of recalled cut-up watermelon, and minimize any hits to your customer satisfaction.

 

 

 

There is a reason companies and organizations industry-wide are putting item-level traceability requirements in place. The information gathered can be so useful to so many people throughout supply chains: increasing efficiencies, minimizing loss, avoiding down-time, increasing sales. The list goes on, and on, and on.

Huh, similar to how eP360 can track things inside of things…inside of things…inside of things…you get the point.

With eP360 you can get visibility to EVERY thing.