Pick to light, pack to light or manufacturing to light.  Ensure 100% quality.

Our customer is a global producer of products and services used in areas such as cooling food, air conditioning, heating buildings, controlling electric motors, compressors, bowling, drives and powering mobile machinery. 

The heating division of the company realised that errors where being made by their assembly operatives and some of the components or incorrect components for their Living Connect Valves where not being picked and placed in the product box.

To ensure customer satisfaction, it was vital that a system was put in place to ensure that all components of the Living Connect Valves where picked and packed in the correct box and shipped to the customer with the correct accessories.

Solution

More Control was approached to address the above problem and after studying the current process More Control proposed the design and development of the Pick to Light Bench. 

The bench has a curved picking arrangement with the ability to hold 14 standard pick bins and a further 14 bins behind these for additional storage.  Above the picking area there is a compartment that holds the product leaflets and boxes.

The Pick to Light Bench is fitted with a data interface terminal that checks the correct components are placed in the correct
product box this is done via lights illuminating the parts that should be picked.  There is also an additional feature which
allows the product box to be weighed to ensure that the target weight has been achieved.  The data interface can also be used to display standard operating procedures helping new operator to fulfil the required task.

How the Pick to Light Bench works

The operator logs on to the Pick to Light Bench using a unique ID, this gives full traceability of who packed what and when.  The parts to be packed are then selected via a drop down menu on the HMI or by scanning the barcode label that has been applied to the product box.

When the selection has been made, lights illuminate the bins that component should be picked from.  When each component is picked the light for that bin switches off.  On completion of all components being placed in the product box it is then weighed, only when the box is within the tolerance of the target weight will the product label be printed and ‘order complete’ is displayed on the HMI.

In addition to picking by light, the operative can confirm that the correct information leaflet has been added by scanning the barcode printed on the leaflet.  This prevents the incorrect language leaflet being sent to the customer.

The software has been developed to incorporate its own internal parts database and user database plus a link to an external system via CSV data exchange to Excel, Access, SQL or SAP.

Benefits

• Productivity, ensuring quality control
• Less returns to the warehouse
• Cost effective
• Increase in profit

About More Control

More Control offers a unique supply and support service for all of your automation requirements, from a single part to a total solution.  We work closely with you to assist in the design and build of your machines in a timely and cost effective manager.  Our dedicated and trustworthy technical team has over 100 years of automation experience between them, we offer cutting edge technology and provide 24/7 technical support.