Molinos Champion SA, Mochasa, is an agro-industrial company dedicated to the manufacture and distribution of balanced food for shrimp, chickens, pigs and others. For 60 years, it has defined its industrial processes with new technologies. Currently, it incorporates concepts of Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation, and works on the automation of its production lines and integration with its information systems using continuous improvement methods such as Kaizen and agile methodologies.
With this strategic vision, they implemented an automation and control project with RFID technology for the logistics process in their new warehouse next to the plant.
Danilo Cárdenas CIO of Mochasa, indicates that the logistics project implemented was very ambitious and disruptive. “We had to send our finished product on a conveyor belt of almost 150 meters from the plant to the company’s warehouse. There were tasks and a schedule that ranged from obtaining municipal permits to defining the best technological solution.
The Logistics project, Cárdenas points out, committed several departments and work teams to define the best technology and good practices that minimize the times of dispatch and shipment of products in clients’ trucks, allow the certification of correct weights in each dispatch, the fast and safe receipt of the finished product from the production area.
The solution for the warehouse’s logistics process was based on the identification of pallets, dispatch doors, production lines and forklifts using RFDI technology. Danilo Cárdenas, CIO of Mochasa
Each pallet in the warehouse was assigned a number with an RFID tag, these pallets are managed as if it were a mini-warehouse and thanks to a Zebra industrial-type computer the weights are measured and the RFID tags are identified. Cárdenas points out that each forklift has an RFID antenna and a scale that allows the reading and weighing of the tagged pallets, for the processes of receiving the finished product and dispatches through RFID portals.
All these, finally, are integrated through WebServices to ERP Dynamics AX, for the synchronization in the production processes, inventories and shipping tickets with weights in the tolerances accepted in the readings of each forklift. For the CIO of Molinos Champion, the implementation allows an efficient and fast reception of the finished product from the production area, generation of dispatch orders of multiple shipments with zero errors, reduction of the time of permanence of the trucks in plant errors in multiple Fast shipments and code transfers between products thanks to the use of hand helds with RFID identifiers
The participation of external strategic allies such as Only Control, was decisive in defining this project and its successful start-up. With the Only Control team we define many of the initial tasks to understand the concepts of RFID technology and how to adapt them to our processes, we determine the scope and potential of this innovative technology, said the executive.
David Perugachi, Operations Manager of Only Control, indicated that the greatest contribution to the project was to identify traceability through RFID technology, and to work with a multidisciplinary team made up of 3 groups of specialists working in an integrated manner both in the installation, calibration and hardware testing, software interface development and project resource management maintaining active communication with the client and meeting the project objectives.
“At Molinos Champion we found professionals who had a clear idea of the business needs and we feel privileged to be part of an emblematic project that marks a milestone in the company.”
David Perugachi, Operations Manager at Only Control