Case Study - Delphi

A fully-traceable document and barcode scanning audit trail provided by Datalogic Scanning products and TPL Labels. Delphi is a leading global supplier of mobile electronics and transportation systems, including automotive powertrain, safety, steering, thermal, and controls & security systems, electrical/electronic architecture, and in-car entertainment technologies. Engineered to meet and exceed the very rigorous standards of the automotive industry, all Delphi technology is also found in computing, communications, consumer electronics, energy and medical applications.

Delphi has approximately 171,000 employees and operates 159 manufacturing sites in 36 countries with sales of $26.4 billion in 2006. Supplying advanced suspension automotive systems to an Oxford based major car manufacturer, Delphi Automotive Systems ensures the right components are supplied to the assembly line in the right sequence as they are needed.

The Challenge: As a direct result of lean manufacturing initiatives designed to reduce assembly costs, automotive manufacturers require their suppliers to provide just-in-time deliveries of pre-assembled systems directly to their production lines.

Delphi Automotive Systems delivers multiple, small batches of suspension systems as they are needed. This means the automotive manufacturer can minimize inventory levels and improve the operational efficiency. What’s more, Delphi must deliver their automotive suspension systems in the correct assembly sequence, as each new vehicle is built-to-customer order, possessing its own unique build specifications, rather than built-to-stock. In fact, out of every 1,000,000 cars that roll off the production line only 10 will be identical.

The Solution: To successfully meet the challenge of always supplying in assembly line sequence the correct suspension module on each corner of the vehicle for over 5200 vehicles a week Delphi designed an innovative picking process.

Working in partnership with TPL Labels Ltd, a UK specialist provider of custom labels, auto-identification and data capture solutions, Delphi reorganised its shop floor into specific lanes designated by the final destination of all the suspension module on the vehicle: front-left, front-right, rear-left, rear-right.

Jim Allen, Operations Manager, explained: “We were tasked to deliver suspension modules in sequence to our customer’s production line. We needed to have a very robust and reliable error-proofing system that ensured our customer would be consistently supported, and protect Delphi with a fully traceable document and barcode scanning audit trail.

“Together TPL Labels Ltd. and Delphi constructed the architecture of the error-proofing and Datalogic provided all of the hardware and integration. Datalogic was selected as the hardware provider for this project because of its excellent market reputation for quality, reliability and project management.”

Datalogic Scanning announces next generation of Gryphon™ 2D Handheld Imagers

Ideal for Cost-Sensitive Environments like Retail and Light Industrial. Datalogic Scanning has announce the immediate availability of the next generation Gryphon™ D432/D412 Plus general purpose 2D imager. The new Gryphon 2D Plus imager enables better efficiency and user productivity at a reduced total cost of ownership. The Gryphon 2D Plus is targeted for use in a wide range of AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Collection) applications for which 2D barcodes are fast emerging as the preferred symbology.

Building on a Heritage of Product Excellence
“With its great ergonomics and high-throughput, the Gryphon 2D Plus imager is an ideal product solution for retail, healthcare, banking, postal, government, and industrial environments,” said Pietro Todescato, General Manager, Handheld Scanning Business Unit.

“In addition to offering signature, image and document capture capabilities, the new Gryphon 2D Plus incorporates many unique features found only in Datalogic products such as our own patented ‘Green Spot’ for good-read feedback in noisy environments, and our efficient ‘five dot’ laser aiming system designed specifically for reading 2D bar codes. None of our competitors can offer equivalent product features.”

Outstanding Performance Reading Both 1D and 2D Codes. The Gryphon D432/D412 Plus imager combines faster, more powerful reading performance with easy and intuitive barcode scanning from any angle. Customers are impressed with how quickly and easily this product reads the most common linear bar codes; stacked or composite symbologies like PDF417, the fast emerging GS1 DataBar™; the most popular 2D codes such as DataMatrix, MaxiCode, Aztec and QR-code; as well as many Postal Codes.

Datalogic Scanning Customers Expect the Very Best – and We Deliver! The Gryphon D432/D412 Plus general-purpose imager combines extreme scanning versatility, outstanding product features and best performance in its class, making this imager well-suited to many new 2D applications. Quick and accurate capture of fast-moving bar codes in postal, airline, and railway conveyor applications, provides the benefit of reduced operating costs and increased productivity.