Advantages of Container-Based Materials Tracking Systems

One of KnarrTek's specialties is the development of real-time container-based materials tracking systems.  These systems track materials in containers, by placing a tracking barcode and/or RFID tag on each  container of materials, individual item, or asset that needs to be tracked. This barcode or RFID tag is then scanned whenever materials are received, added to, or removed from a container, or the container is moved to a new location or shipped to a customer.

This is the same method used by organizations such as FedEx, UPS and Amazon but extended to tracking materials within multiple warehouses, stock rooms, manufacturing facilities, as well as outdoors in yards and at building sites.

Traditionally inventory tracking, warehouse management, and ERP systems have tracked the quantity of materials at each location, which is why they are referred to as item-locator systems. These are not, however, capable of handling many, more complex, industrial materials tracking requirements, where it is necessary to use container-based materials tracking. These include:

• Tracking containers of materials with different lot numbers, serial numbers, or expiration dates,
• Recording, in detail, which containers of material were used to make each batch of product or used in each industrial process and capturing a materials traceability history.
• Tracking the packing and shipping of nested containers, such as pallets, that contain many different part numbers, including generating advanced shipment notice (ASN) data.
• Warning material handlers if they are about to pick, use, or ship the wrong or defective materials for a customer order.
• Tracking rolls, reels, and sheets of material with the same part number but different lengths and widths.
• Tracking work-in-process materials as they flow from work-center to work-center, including tracking the real-time status of customer orders.
• Accurately tracking the cost of making products, including accounting for the cost of scrap, rework, and reuse of offcut materials from prior jobs.
• Accurately tracking raw, intermediate, WIP, and finished product inventory at each location, in real-time, as opposed to back-flushing the raw materials inventory based on the product BOM after the finished product is entered into inventory or shipped to the customer, as is done by item locator systems.

For more information about container-based tracking, please:

• Watch the video: Container-Based vs. Item-Locator Inventory Tracking Methods: (9 minutes).
• Download a data sheet on Real-Time Container-Based Materials Tracking

The need for Container-Based tracking usually shows up as an "Oddball" tracking application, which does not easily fit within the confines of an Item Locator system. If you have such a case, please click on the [Contact Us] button below and our team of experts will be happy to work with you to see if a container-based solution will solve your materials tracking problems.