IDM | Technology/IT
Simple barcode scanner
integration
Once the non-from-concentrate juices or
smoothies have been filled, labelled and
packed into a box, a gripper arm transports
the drinks automatically, shift by shift on a
pallet embossed with a barcode label. Then
the pallet is moved via a conveyor belt
through a fixed-position barcode scanner,
which is connected to the IPC installed at
the palletising station. In this way, the palleted
production quantity is automatically
posted in SAP with the selected production
order. If a pallet is not completely filled,
the Gropper employee has to manually
enter the quantity of drinks on the pallet,
because the system works on the assumption
of fully loaded pallets. Just a couple of
tips of the fingers on the IPC touch screen
are needed for this, meaning that production
speed is not adversely affect. Gropper
has wall-mounted IPCs in its warehouse in
Stockach, showing a visual display of current
stock levels based on a warehouse layout.
These digital diagrams help Gropper’s
34 · 8 2017 | international-dairy.com
About Gropper
Molkerei Gropper GmbH & Co. KG, based
in Bissingen, Germany, is a private label
specialist to the national and international
market. Its customers include
food retailers in the discounter, full-line
supplier and self-service department
store distribution channels. The product
range includes traditional milk-based articles,
milk drinks, yoghurt, desserts and
coffee/milk combination drinks. The
second production site in Stockach on
Lake Constance focuses on bottling nonfrom
concentrate juices and smoothies.
Whether it be production or warehouse,
no matter: Their individually configurable
touch sensitivity means these latest
PCAP multi-touch screens can even be
used by employees wearing gloves.
If ever there is a production stoppage,
the employee uses the touch screen to
enter the length and reason for the interruption
– providing the basis for an intensive
benchmarking process.
Putting paid to piles of paperwork: The
digital layout of the warehouse means
employees can immediately see what articles
are stored where.
staff to maintain a permanent overview,
and to quickly locate goods when it comes
to the loading process, for example.
Operable with gloves
Gropper’s employees wear various types
of hygienic gloves in the production and
warehousing areas. It used to be the case
that glove-operable devices needed resistive
touch screens, which would begin to
wear after just a relatively short period of
time. CAITRON's PCAP multi-touch technology
overcomes this technological deficit.
Its capacitive touch screens are extremely
robust and long-lasting, but the individually
configurable touch sensitivity means
that these devices can be operated even
by those users wearing thick gloves. "It
used to the case that our employees in
the main plant at Bissingen, tried to operate
the touch screens with pens or other
hard objects, which ended up damaging
the resistive touch screens that we used
to run," says an IT manager. "That's all history
now thanks to our new, robust capacitive
touch screens, because the IPCs
don’t respond to information entered using
objects."
Added value with shift
schedule management
Apart from its production and warehouse
processes, Gropper also uses CAITRON IPCs
to help record its employees’ working times.
Employees log into the system at the start
of the shift, by holding their personalised
token up to the LEGIC RFID reader of the
IPC. They log off in the same way once the
shift is over. In this way, Gropper is able to
record the employee working hours largely
At the start of their shift, employees use
their personal token to log into the IPC
via the integrated LEGIC RFID reader.
automatically for the personnel department,
saving a great deal of administrative
effort in the process. But the IPC also
assists Gropper in the distribution of shift
schedules. "The system knows exactly when
an employee last called up their shift schedule.
If there is any change made to the shift
schedule, this information is displayed on
the screen to the employee, who can then
directly retrieve the schedule, with the option
of forwarding it to their mailbox," explains
a Gropper IT manager at Gropper.
Summary
Whether it be production, warehousing or
work time-recording, it makes no difference:
With CAITRON IPCs as the front-end interface
to its system landscape, Gropper has
simplified its operating processes and made
them more efficient. Employees can easily
control plant and SAP applications via the
touch screen IPC, from directly within the
production environment. In this way, Gropper
has achieved high-performance, troublefree
operating processes.