ICT and e-Business in the Pulp, Paper and Paper ... - empirica
ICT and e-Business in the Pulp, Paper and Paper ... - empirica
ICT and e-Business in the Pulp, Paper and Paper ... - empirica
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<strong>Pulp</strong>, paper <strong>and</strong> paper products<br />
Therefore, as argued above, customers have a critical <strong>in</strong>fluence on RFID decisions of<br />
P&P companies.<br />
RFID solutions can improve <strong>the</strong> efficiency of receipt, storage <strong>and</strong> retrieval activities <strong>in</strong><br />
warehouses, <strong>the</strong>reby elim<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>g possible bottlenecks <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> flow of products <strong>and</strong><br />
materials. They can also help companies to optimise space utilisation.<br />
Typically, as <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> follow<strong>in</strong>g case study on International <strong>Paper</strong>, <strong>in</strong>ventory <strong>in</strong> paper mills<br />
has been bar-coded <strong>and</strong> manually l<strong>in</strong>ked <strong>in</strong>to a legacy production system that h<strong>and</strong>les<br />
order fulfilment. RFID systems enable <strong>the</strong> company to digitally l<strong>in</strong>k order<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong><br />
production processes with <strong>the</strong> warehouse management system. When a customer order<br />
is received, <strong>the</strong> respective data (customer data, prospective delivery date, <strong>and</strong> product<br />
specifications), are not only entered <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong> exist<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>formation system (normally an<br />
ERP system), but can also be l<strong>in</strong>ked to a particular RFID tag by means of a unique ID<br />
number on <strong>the</strong> tag. This tag is <strong>the</strong>n placed on <strong>the</strong> core of a paper roll <strong>and</strong> l<strong>in</strong>ked to a unit<br />
shipment for that customer. This way, <strong>the</strong> h<strong>and</strong>l<strong>in</strong>g of <strong>the</strong> f<strong>in</strong>al product is greatly<br />
facilitated. In practice, forklift drivers <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> mills can, for example, receive transport<br />
orders to deliver <strong>the</strong> crates from <strong>the</strong> storage area to <strong>the</strong> packag<strong>in</strong>g mach<strong>in</strong>es on an itemper-item<br />
basis. This constitutes a process <strong>in</strong>novation which clearly has potential for<br />
<strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g efficiency <strong>in</strong> various ways. International <strong>Paper</strong>, for example, reports a 5%<br />
<strong>in</strong>crease <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>ventory turns due to <strong>the</strong> implementation of RFID <strong>in</strong> late 2002.<br />
In an RFID-focused future scenario, each roll of paper will have a unique identify<strong>in</strong>g tag<br />
that provides on dem<strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong>formation about process<strong>in</strong>g, location, <strong>and</strong> shipp<strong>in</strong>g status.<br />
This could not only facilitate <strong>in</strong>ternal processes, but could also improve customer<br />
services. On <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r h<strong>and</strong>, however, <strong>the</strong>re are issues that still need to be exam<strong>in</strong>ed <strong>in</strong>to<br />
more depth, such as <strong>the</strong> disposal of tags <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> case of recyclable packag<strong>in</strong>g material.<br />
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