Why monitoring

Below examples from customer situations are common and often recognized:

• Your products are shipped and arrive with damage and nobody knows what happened.
• During unpacking of shipped products, there are parts broken off or have shifted. Are you in doubt whether or not you are using the correct packing, transport method or transport companies to make sure your products will arrive in good order?
• A wooden crate containing your product was damaged at your logistics forwarder. A damage assesment cannot be made by the forwarder. You can ask pictures and with this limited information you hopefully will make a correct decision whether or not to continue with this shipment.
• You are wondering where your shipment is during transportation as time is essential to meet your (altered) delivery deadline?
•  You need a product from your warehouse fast! After a short search, the product is located. The product is in bad shape and cannot be used!
• A customer likes to use your supplied product after a storage period. The product is damaged and the customer is blaiming you and wants to make use of your warranty service.
• Less product quantities arrive at the customer then originally shipped.

These situations can be limited by using sensors to provide you with latest information about products during transportation or in storage. Data can be used to communicate with responsible partners in a transparant and controlled way.

Easy and convinient.

Filling the blind spot

Using data logging systems during transportation and storage, you are in control of your products even after they left your facilities.

Companies are putting a lot of effort into their products during fabrication. Handing them over to logistic providers not knowing what happens with the products until they are unpacked at their final destination is quite challenging. This blind spot can be filled!

With the gathered information from the data loggers and our organizational improvement talent, we can support you to deliver great products and minimize risks and lower your costs.

Sounds good? Find out how!

Modor – Smart Systems likes to support their customers to integrate a data monitoring system into their quality procedures.

Data from the DLS’s can be used to gain experience and improve:

• transportation method
• product design
• packing and interior design
• performance of partners in the supply chain

Quality awareness and clear responsibilities of all partners within the supply chain will have the highest efficiency to improve overall quality and will lower the costs of warranty, scrap and rework, loss of time and manpower.

Using a DLS

Show your customers that transported products have been treated in a correct, controlled and documented way. This reflects your concern about quality and customer satisfaction.

Products have been designed to perform at their best during operation. Before they become operational, products need to be transported, stored and installed. To meet high standards of availability and reliability of your products, it is essential to make sure the condition of your products are the same after installation as when they left your factory. In this way problems and failures can be kept to a minimum during operation.

Remember when GPS Fleet tracking was introduced in the transport sector? Truckdrivers did not like the idea at all. Nowadays it is common practice and GPS tracking provided a lot of advantages, also for truck drivers.  With the current digitalizion in the industrial and logistics sectors it is essential to keep pace and get familiar and adapt product monitoring during transport and storage. This way you remain competitive and (become) leading in your branch.

Many companies – different needs

How to start with monitoring your goods?

This depends on your needs and situation. Some customers are conservative and don’t have knowledge or manpower to start with digitalization within their organization. These are often small or medium sized companies. On the other end there are companies with a lot of knowledge, large ERP systems, supplier evaluation programs, KPI programs, QA procedures, engineering power and possibly a well documented digitalization plan.

Good news, Modor – Smart Systems supports all companies in every situation.

To start with a basic monitoring system the initial costs and running costs are kept low. This enables every organization to start with monitoring! With a limited amount of support from our side, small and medium sized companies can explore the possibilities of sensor systems.

Our monitoring systems can be extended upto an almost unlimited amount of sensors attached to your goods travelling all over the world. The basic sensors are in such a price range that sending them back to your companies is sometimes economical not viable. This also depends on the end destination and your relationship with the forwarder or end-user. Are there for example many shipment to the same address per year. Are Field Service engineers from your company performing the installation of your equipment? In these cases, a returning procedure can be made.

For the sensor systems within the higher price range a returning procedure has to be in place. It is also recomended to add a two-yearly calibration check of the sensors and battery replacement schedule.

No need for monitoring systems?

Companies who like to integrate monitoring systems into their organization and improve overall performance, efficiency and quality can be support with our expertise on change management and quality improvement projects.

Management of companies are often not aware of hidden costs due to damaged goods, rework, warranty etc. as the information they receive from the organization is not complete or has been kept secret. In most cases working procedures or quality procedures are not in place, neglected or not working.

Some questions related to such a program:

Warranty handling procedures:

• Are (detailed) figures known from transport and storage losses or damages?
• Are templates of incident reports available? Are they correctly filled, followed-up and archived?
• What are the main causes of warranty or non-performing equipment?
• Are guidelines or working procedures in place on how to handle claims or rework?
• Are the cost of warranty a KPI and are they set correctly?
• Are claims reviewed in a structured way to improve quality (lessons learned)?

Product, packing and packaging improvements:

• Can we improve our products? (construction, weight, mounting facility for data logger included in design, design adjusted for easy and secure transportation)
• Can we improve our packing? (robustness, improved container, condensate absorption system, water barrier)
• Can we improve our packaging? (combined transport, stacking, standardized or special containers or pallets)
• Can we improve our production methods? (forms and procedures, quality control, hold/witness points, testing, FAT)
• Can we improve our storage method? (heated storage, storage containers, product inspection/monitoring by sensors, damage control, stacking, reduce movements, tracking system, handling of goods (training/education of personnel)
• Can we improve our Field Services? (quality perception FS engineers, instructions and guidelines in place, kick-off meetings, acceptable limits get-the-job-done mentality, knowledge FS engineers about contract (scope-of-supply and responsibilities), forms and customer acceptance tests)

Corrective and preventive effect of DLS’s:

Corrective: 

Lessons learned, liability questions, vendor rating, claiming questions, quality awareness through the complete supply-chain, clear ownership responsibilities

Preventive: 

Indications (stickers/plate that DLS is mounted) = more careful handling of goods

Information to vendors that customer is shipping goods with DLS (quality awareness at vendors/suppliers) and what this means. Make quality control a topic which can/should be discussed with supply chain members.

The change of incidents or failures from products are in the beginning and at the end of their product lifecycle.

The bathtub curve: