Warehouse Management System Solutions(WMS)-Success Story Lucent

Warehouse Solutions - Success Stories - Lucent

Lucent Technologies Keeps In Touch Through 900 MHz RF System

E.T. may have been one of the first to phone home on one. Now most everyone does. Lucent Technologies and other global communications companies who made the wireless vision a reality now face an even greater challenge: To keep up with demand.

Lucent means literally "clarity of vision." Since Lucent Technologies became a separate systems and technology unit of AT&T in February 1996, the company has remained focused on developing and using innovative wireless technologies. Over the past five years, Lucent Technologies' state-of-the-art manufacturing practices have earned the company a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a Deming Prize, and two Shingo prizes for excellence in American manufacturing. Lucent Technologies' Omaha manufacturing plant -- called the Omaha Works -- alone is recognized as a world-class manufacturing facility.

Navigating the Flow of Information

Phil Warren, production control manager at the Omaha Works, said: "To maintain the company's leadership position in the industry, we began running our operations with a wireless data communications system that could keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovation. We're using the latest and greatest equipment for swift, continuous, and documented flow of raw materials and finished goods throughout the plant, from receiving to shipping."

With over 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing and warehousing space, the Omaha Works faced a daunting mobility challenge. Warren said: "The second you start talking about the need for mobility, you are talking about the need for current information. However, the people who were walking or driving around the warehouse selecting material had been relying on batched information that was at least 24 hours old. We had to find a system that could run all of our operations in real time."

The Omaha Works installed a warehouse management system (WMS) in 1987 to handle the storage and shipment of the more than 50,000 telecommunications products that the plant manufactures. These products now include a new generation of electronic wire and cable products that carry both voice signals for phone systems and data and video cable for specialized applications in computer systems, instrumentation and local area networks (LANs). The plant's worldwide annual sales from customers like regional Bell operating companies, independent telephone companies, and telecommunications marketing and distribution companies like Anixter and Graybar, are approximately $1 billion.

The WMS implemented by the Omaha Works, and two other of Lucent Technologies' manufacturing plants in Norcross, Georgia and Indianapolis, Indiana, is RF Navigator. The RF Navigator software package, customized for the Omaha Works, relies on an Oracle database and runs on three different UNIX servers: AT&T 3B2, NCR 3345, and HP9000.

RF Navigator interfaces with Lucent Technologies' AMAPS MRP II system, which runs the plant's manufacturing processes off of IBM mainframes. RF Navigator and AMAPS interface neatly in real time. RF Navigator receives customer orders from AMAPS and then executes the receiving, storage, picking, and shipping processes. Simultaneously, AMAPS receives uploads from RF Navigator of all information pertaining to receipts, shipments, and inventory adjustments.

The Things That Make Communications Work

"Our warehouse operations were driven by stacks of paper before we implemented a warehouse management system," said Warren. "If a customer changed an order or the quantity of an order after placing it, we had to scour the warehouse for the paperwork. We could make the change on our manufacturing system, but the warehouse personnel did not have access to the system. They still picked from a piece of paper that had 24-hour-old information on it."

Along with playing an integral part in the Omaha Works' order processing and manufacturing operations, the RF Navigator system is a turnkey solution for the plant's warehousing and distribution operations: a solution that includes warehouse management software and radio frequency (RF) communications hardware to keep information flowing throughout the plant in real time. The solution also involves services like training, support, and system configuration. Before the WMS was implemented, managers were constantly fighting fires. Now plant managers are able to proactively plan and control workloads.

RF Navigator tracks the plant’s raw materials and records the location of stored products in real time - eliminating the information gap that once existed between the time raw materials were received or manufactured and the time the product became available for storage and shipment. The AMAPS MRP II system continually feeds orders to the WMS, and the inventory data tracked by the WMS is updated immediately and continually during each stage of operations. Everyone in the organization, from managers and administrators, to warehouse personnel now has the ability to work from up-to-the-minute and accurate information.

Because the WMS assigns a bar code to each component of a product manufactured by the Omaha Works, now the plant can track an order from raw material, through shipping, to the customer with RF data collection devices. Conversely, customers can track their shipments back to the raw material, if needed, because all information pertaining to the shipment is contained on the attached bar code label.

900 MHz Spread Spectrum System Helps The Plant Keep In Touch

In each of the three Lucent Technologies plants where RF Navigator has been implemented, the RF terminals have been provided by Norcross, Georgia-based LXE Inc., a leading manufacturer of wireless data communications hardware. Lucent Technologies has continued to use LXE equipment through a series of upgrades because of its proven reliability and durability.

Approximately 260 LXE handheld and vehicle-mounted RF terminals are currently used at the Omaha Works for bar code-based data collection, along with four LXE network controllers and approximately 12 RF base stations. The most recent upgrade to the Omaha Works family of systems was necessitated in April 1997 by the completion of a new 400,000 square foot Global Provisioning Center (GPC).

The LXE terminals found in the new facility use 900 MHz frequencies and frequency hopping spread spectrum technology -- a technology combination that is offered only by LXE. "For customers who have large coverage areas coupled with high data rates, our 900 MHz frequency hopping wireless LAN is an excellent solution," explained Bob Scaringe, LXE's marketing communications manager. "By using this system, the Omaha Works can transmit 64 Kbs of data over the RF link, and at the same time the plant is getting the best interference rejection available in frequency hopping."

Holding the Line on Costs

The plant's manufacturing shop depends on the WMS to keep accurate inventories so that production is not disrupted and so that safety stocks, and therefore, warehousing space, can be kept to a minimum. Because of the reduction of inventory and because the system virtually has eliminated human error and wasteful warehousing and distribution practices, the Omaha Works has experienced significant operations costs savings.

Inventory accuracy, which had been 95 percent, now exceeds 99 percent. Material handling efficiency has improved 20 percent. Lead time has been reduced (the time spent unloading the trucks alone has been reduced by 75 percent). Inventory has been reduced 15 to 25 percent. The plant's goal, according to Warren, is to use the materials received in a day on the same day -- with no waste.

"We marvel at how the high-tech systems we make interface with the high-tech operations systems we use," said Warren. He explained that now the salespeople can enter an order on their laptop computers and transmit it directly to the plant by using cellular phones connected to their laptops. If an order was placed on Monday, the plant would receive it Monday night and immediately direct it to the warehouse. The order could be out on a truck on its way to the customer by Tuesday morning.

According to Warren, shipments previously took a minimum of three days. He explained that an order wouldn't have come directly into a factory. A region would receive an order and then transmit it to the factory the next day. Then on the third or fourth day, depending on the type of product ordered, the factory would print out the order for the warehouse to pick for shipment. "Without LXE's RF equipment in the warehouse," said Warren, "the continuous flow of information making same day shipments possible would not exist."

The Omaha Works now is virtually paperless, except for the bills of lading printed just before shipment. The plant's WMS prepares the bills of lading and tracks and compares what should be shipped with what actually is shipped. The system also indicates item loading sequences (starting with the last item that is to be unloaded) -- which helps to eliminate human error.

Calling the Shots

"It took time for us to get adjusted to such a dramatically new way of doing business," said Warren. "We actually had the hardest time adjusting to the quality of the information provided by the system." He explained that though training was essential in building confidence in the system, the warehouse personnel still were reluctant to trust the accuracy and timeliness of their picking orders.

"Now you hear a lot of 'my system does this, and my system does that' when we give facility tours to companies interested in our warehousing operations," said Warren. "Once we became confident in the reliability and accuracy of our equipment, we took ownership of it. We're in complete control of our operations. We're able to keep in touch through our wireless data communications system."