Background
US-headquartered company GlobalFoundries, one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers and designers, plays a vital role in the ever faster growing hardware industry. With large manufacturing plants in the United States, Singapore, and Germany, GlobalFoundries is serving clients from industries including automotive, computing, consumer products, construction, and engineering. Among them are brands such as BMW, Qualcomm, Siemens, Motorola, or Ford.
Challenges
For their production and distribution, GlobalFoundries owns a series of warehouses and inbound store facilities, whose efficiency is critical to their on-time delivery. The company wanted to improve the picking process in these warehouses, as it was mostly an analogue paper-based solution, lacking efficiency and error-correction.
Solution
GlobalFoundries began looking for opportunities to drive efficiency and accuracy into the picking operations. Teaming up with the IT department and the internal innovations team, they found that a solution based on smart glasses and augmented reality (AR) could change the game for them.
The TeamViewer Frontline platform with its vision picking solution xPick, tailored to logistics processes of all kinds, was identified as an industry-proven software for enterprise AR applications. Since the implementation, the pickers can now work with their hands free. Paper printouts as well as manual sorting and prioritizing are a thing of the past. The employees get exactly the information they need, when they need it – shown on the display of their smart glasses directly in their field of vision.
Results
- Just by eliminating the printout and the manual sorting, GlobalFoundries was able to save 25 percent time in the picking process after only one month.
- At the same time, inventory accuracy has increased by one third as picking errors became virtually impossible.
- As a matter of cost, but also ecological responsibility, the new process eliminated about 100,000 sheets of printed paper per year.
- Finally, the solution fully meets GlobalFoundries high requirements for workers‘ rights, data protection, and occupational health and safety.
- Feedback from the staff was consistently positive. Ergonomics have improved, and the time spent searching, sorting, and prioritizing has been significantly reduced, making the employees’ everyday work much easier.
Kevin Hidalgo Senior Director Logistics at GlobalFoundries
“We are very happy with the implemented solution, leveraging the power of augmented reality and virtual picking. We have really seen the benefits into our operations through efficiency and accuracy.”
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