DROP S.A.

DROP S.A. is one of the largest and most modern companies in poultry industry in Poland. The company is one of the world’s leading companies producing healthy and safe food of the highest quality. As a result of dynamic development, the company faced the challenge of fast and efficient warehouse management and production planning. The solution was proposed by IBCS Poland offering ibcsDragon IT platform.

Status before the start of the implementation of automatic identification of goods system

DROP has its own production lines and warehouse space, and the main manufacturing process covers three areas: slaughterhouse and production of finished products, storage and transport to the recipient.

– Due to the rapid development of our company, we began to struggle with logistic problems. The existing solutions based on paper documentation caused difficulties in planning production and sales. The previous method of batch tracking significantly extended the time of determining the strategy of their release and inventory. – says Renata Michalczyk, Manager of DROP S.A. Poultry Plant.

The lack of a coherent IT system also caused difficulties in accounting employees for the tasks performed and burdened them with rewriting information from paper documents to the data system on production and warehouse processes.

ibcsDragon as a solution

– Needs analysis showed that the right solution would be to introduce a system enabling the registration of production and warehouse operations at the place of their implementation. It was also necessary to simplify the method of data registration by maximizing the automation of this process. To carry out these tasks, we decided to use a system based on ibcsDragon IT platform – says Michał Wasilewski, Account Manager in IBCS Poland.

ibcsDragon is software developed by IBCS Poland, which enables mobile implementation of processes managed by external systems (ERP, MES, etc.). Business logic remains in the external system, and the task of ibcsDragon is to implement this logic using portable terminals and automatic identification technology (barcodes, RFID, etc.). ibcsDragon can be used as a mobile client of the mentioned enterprise management systems. ibcsDragon application is used in production and distribution warehouses that have so far been managed using paper documents. The system can also be used in production for mobile registration of selected production operations.

Labels and documents

In case of DROP S.A. two modules were used: “Labels” and “Documents”, which work on the same platform, enabling easy integration of data between production and the warehouse. The “Labels” module has been implemented in the production area and its task is to collect data on manufactured products, as well as to print labels necessary for their marking. In turn, the “Documents” module works in the warehouse area and is responsible for registering warehouse operations (receipts, releases and inventory). In addition to the above functional modules, ibcsDragon platform also includes an administration module. It provides the ability to configure the system, manage dictionaries (assortment, users, etc.) and generate reports on performed operations (data registered in the system are archived in a local database).

External hardware with which the implemented solution has been integrated is primarily Radwag and Espera scales, as well as Espera label applicators.

– The interface to these devices was one of the most difficult elements of the project, because not all of them had proper documentation available. Thanks to tests carried out in a laboratory specially prepared for this occasion, as well as thanks to the support from suppliers and service technicians of weighing systems, we managed to stabilize the correct data exchange between the system and scales and applicators – says Jacek Liber, Director of Software Development Department at IBCS Poland.

Thanks to this, all measurements are automatically registered in the system, and on the basis of them and previously defined information about the produced assortment, labels for marking individual and collective packaging are printed. The implementation of the system solution also required close cooperation with the supplier of the financial and accounting system SoftLab, with whom ibcsDragon platform exchanges data on warehouse and production operations.

Difficult working conditions

Due to the specific working conditions encountered in meat processing plants (at the end of each day, the production area is washed with chemical compounds), special hardware solutions have been used, and the application working on panel computers has been optimized so that employees wearing gloves can freely navigate the function icons . All devices were controlled via a WLAN wireless network installed throughout the production and warehouse area. The implementation of the project, including additional conceptual work related to the launch of data exchange with Espera scales, lasted 10 months.

Additional benefits achieved by DROP S.A. after implementing ibcsDragon system

In addition to solving the company’s basic problems related to production planning, inventory verification and improving the work of DROP S.A. employees, also gained a number of additional benefits. These include: significant acceleration of reading the production history and generating detailed reports, more effective production planning and shortening the order fulfilment time, the ability to precisely settle production by weighing and registering each package, and reducing the cost of maintaining production lines thanks to appropriate sealing and securing of equipment.