Companies operating in industries regulated by governments look to track–and-trace systems comprised of software and various sensor inputs help them stay compliant. Consumer-facing companies have also adopted these systems in order to mitigate the extent of product recalls through being able to track from raw material to the store shelf just which lots have been affected by a defect or problem. Companies are now discovering that track-and-trace can be critical for control and operational excellence .

The BAMES Group, located near Milan, Italy, was looking not only to track products and their components, but was also looking into track-and-trace applications in order to gain more control over its processes. Information Technology (IT) Manager Walter Gnocchi explains that the Group is composed of Bartolini After Markedustomt Electronic Services (BAMES) and Services for Electronics Manufacturing (SEM). Revenues for the combined companies are about $140 million with total employment of about 600. BAMES focuses on aftermarket electronics product repairs, while SEM designs and contract-manufactures electronic products.

With all of this in-house expertise, BAMES has undertaken two initiatives to design, manufacture and market its own products. One is a WiMAX (for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) base station targeted initially at the European market. The other initiative, dubbed SPIM (for Solar Photovoltaic Integrated Management), targets the solar market with a product that will measure productivity of photovoltaic modules.

BAMES’ traceability project was undertaken with a Visiprise application. That company was subsequently acquired by SAP AG, the Walldorf, Germany-based enterprise software vendor, a fact that fit nicely, given that BAMES was already using SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP ) application. According to Gnocchi, “The main reason we started the traceability project was to identify products with part defects. If the defect is found by internal quality control, we need to change production quickly. If the defect is found by our customer’s quality control, we need the information immediately so that we can determine the extent of the problem. Even if the part makes it all the way to the consumer before a defect is found, we need to know in order to check the design and see if a change is necessary.”

Managers wanted to apply traceability to critical components of a new mobile GPS (Global Positioning System) track-and-locater product, called Ghostway, in order to minimize the extent of any potential recall and take immediate steps to correct the problem. “While we have not experienced a recall, we have tested the system with 100 products and found the ultimate users [of each of the individual GPS products] within one day.”

What makes this significant is that in the past, BAMES maintained a number of databases. Each database was structured differently from the others, and each was prone to operator input errors. Tracing a product to its end-user was a long and arduous process. “We are now able to prevent one of the worst scenarios—a total recall of the products,” Gnocchi adds.

Automate process

The second problem the company undertook was to automate another process involving disparate databases that traditionally required significant labor to find products in the field. This case involved a customer using the company’s machine-to-machine (M2M) modules who wanted to upgrade some of them. Now that BAMES can identify serial numbers, the recall for upgrade program works much more efficiently.

Gnocchi’s team also wanted to gain better control of the manufacturing process. Through an automatic identification system and single database, they are able to identify where critical components are installed and prevent assembly of additional products if a problem in a component is found. They can also speed up re-work activities because of the additional real-time information.

The company has also gained better control of its components, both for inventory control as well as for version control. This improves inventory planning, reduces inventory overall and reduces scrap through obsolescence.

System architecture includes SAP ERP and manufacturing execution system (MES) products running on a server. Web-based thin clients provide a view into the system for operations managers and operators. Using auto-scanning bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies reduces the chance for data input error while speeding up the process.

Summing up the benefits, Gnocchi notes, “In a dynamic market, we need good control over the process in case of unexpected issues with our customers. Over the past two to three years, we have seen an increase in customer information requests. Even the products are not static anymore. We have some bill-of-material changes every two to three weeks. Traceability is a must now ...