The Coroplast Group is a globally successful and independent family business. In over 90 years, this group with its three divisions Coroplast Tape, Coroflex & WeWire has developed from a local manufacturer of electrical insulation materials to a global player and technology leader in the business areas of technical adhesive tapes, cables & wires and wire harnesses.
Industry: Automotive supplier
Applied OPAL products
System Environment
Label Designer
- Label printing for fully automated process.
- Double label printing, whereby the first label is to be printed automatically and the second by manual trigger.
- Description of the RFID tags
- Elimination of incorrect postings
- Correct labeling of residual quantities
- Up-to-date and accurate feedback of goods movements.
- Increased process availability.
Initial situation
At Coroplast, the manual posting of goods movements and the actual movement of goods has caused various problems and errors in the past. In order to increase accuracy and eliminate incorrect postings, Coroplast decided to digitize with RFID labels at the Wuppertal site.
The project
Dealing with process interruptions, labeling residual quantities and booking the movement of goods from production to the warehouse were only a few manual operations in the automated packaging process of rolls on pallets at Coroplast. Nevertheless, errors in these operations have generated an enormous amount of work to correct the system data again.
The project team implemented the following strategy in order to achieve the goal of the project assignment, namely the elimination of sources of error:
- Automated labeling of pallets, including the recording of residual quantities.
- Introduction of RFID labels for the automatic recording of goods movements.
OPAL LABELMANAGEMENT’s task was to automatically label the RFID tags at the right time, on the right printer and with the right data. Coroplast is already familiar with the label system and uses it to print Tesla labels in Mexico, among others. Coroplast was therefore able to make the adjustments to the labeling process independently.
The separation of data, form and design from the label allows us a great deal of flexibility, which we need in our products and markets.
Project manager: Benedikt Platvoet
The entire project took three months and after the project went live, no more delays or incorrect bookings were recorded. In addition, Coroplast now benefits from more accurate warehousing and more efficient stock control. Following the successful implementation at the Wuppertal site, Coroplast is now planning to implement the process at its other international sites.
Conclusion
The project clearly shows how existing processes can be made more efficient and stable with new technologies such as RFID tags. It also emphasizes the importance of well-functioning support processes such as the labeling process so that the overlying control process can also benefit from them.
