Global Soft Drink Company Increases In-Warehouse Efficiency by Deploying Flic Scanners and Scanner Wedge Software
Business Situation
The Texas repair division of a global soft drink company found that manually tracking inventory such as vending machines and coolers was slow, tedious and error-prone. With up to 300 pieces of inventory per warehouse at any given time, numerous hours were required to manually record inventory numbers and then enter them into a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet. Doubling the problem was each piece of equipment has two tracking numbers that need to be recorded each time equipment was received, shipped or counted for monthly audit. Manually recording these numbers commonly resulted in errors which consumed additional time and resources to resolve.
Business Solution
To replace pen and paper tracking, Flic Scanners were deployed for each of the warehouses. Scanner Wedge for Windows was installed on each computer in order to push scanned bar codes into Excel spreadsheet. The solution leveraged the previous investment into desktop computers running Microsoft Office which made for a speedy and inexpensive
deployment. What is Wedge Software? Wedge software transfers data from a bar code scanner to a software application as it were typed into a keyboard. This allows the user to bar code enable virtually any software application that accepts keyboard input. Wedge software is available for Windows and multiple mobile platforms. Click here to learn more about Wedge Software. Employees now use the Flic Scanner to scan the existing bar codes on each piece of equipment inventory when received, shipped or counted monthly. By utilizing the onboard memory of the Flic Scanner, employees quickly and accuratelyscan bar codes at the location of the equipment inventory. Once scanning is complete, the Flic Scanner is connected to the warehouse computer’s USB port. Bar code data is then transferred into an Excel spreadsheet via Microvision Scanner Wedge for Windows software. Inventory spreadsheets from each warehouse are then emailed to a central office and subsequently imported into warehouse inventory software.
Benefits
- Efficiency – By utilizing time previously used to manually track or reconcile incorrect inventory numbers, more time is allocated to equipment repair, increasing overall warehouse throughput.
- Accuracy – Scanning bar codes and automatically downloading them into a spreadsheet has eliminated inventory tracking errors.
- Fast Implementation – By leveraging existing hardware and software, and only requiring simple "wedge" software from Microvision, deployment and implementation was quick and easy.