RF helps Hasbro get ahead of the game

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 5/1/2000

What's the best way to manage the complex operations of a large manufacturing and storage facility? For toy and game manufacturer Hasbro Inc., installing a warehouse management system was part of the answer. But not until the company linked radio-frequency (RF) technology to its system last year did things really take off.

Hasbro Inc., headquartered in Pawtucket, R.I., reported net earnings of $4.2 billion in 1999 from the worldwide sales of toys, board games, and interactive software. The toy maker operates a plant in East Longmeadow, Mass., where it manufactures some of its merchandise. Also located at that site are a raw-materials receiving warehouse that handles inbound shipments and a work-in-process warehouse that supports a manufacturing plant. Both warehouses-which together take up 250,000 square feet of space-are actually housed in the same building as the plant. More than 50 employees work in those two distribution operations.

Goodbye Paper

To oversee its manufacturing process, the company in July 1998 implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from German software vendor SAP. About six months later, the toymaker also installed SAP's warehouse module in its raw-materials and work-in-process warehousing operations.

But the most sophisticated warehousing system in the world cannot operate very effectively without real-time data. So Hasbro retained Teklogix Inc., which is headquartered outside Toronto, to connect that software with a radio-frequency (RF) system. Teklogix used its TekRF front-end software to enable the SAP warehousing module to communicate with radio-frequency terminals located on vehicles as well as with the workers' handheld units.

With the new system, workers can update inventory counts in real time via radio-frequency transmissions. As they scan bar codes on items placed into or removed from storage, the RF system simultaneously updates information on available stock in the WMS and inventory-management system.

The paperless system has boosted the efficiency of the inbound warehouse operation. In the past, forklift truck drivers used a paper picklist as a guide for retrieving items from storage. After the items were selected and removed for manufacturing, the forklift driver would bring that picklist to a clerical worker, who, in turn, typed in the information on picked items to update the inventory.

"Now the truck driver goes to a location, scans the material, and the inventory gets updated with a push of a button," says Don Lacharite, a division supervisor at Hasbro. He estimates that the paperless procedure has saved 16 manhours of labor per shift. In fact, the RF system combined with the WMS has allowed Hasbro to manage the movement of three thousand skids in and out of storage each day.

Adequate Resources Assure Success

Lacharite credits Teklogix's training and field support with getting the warehouse system up and running quickly. "Teklogix provided us with trainers," he says. "We had our staff fully operational in less than 30 days." Lacharite adds that designating and training a small number of workers to become in-house experts on the new system was a key to the successful installation.

Other factors that contributed to the installation's success were Teklogix's decision to implement the project in phases, adding functions one at a time over a three-week period, and Lacharite's decision to devote adequate human resources to the project in the early stages. "Someone advised me to dedicate enough resources," he says. "I chose to suffer up front. But the reward for doing that is that [workers] quickly become proficient [in the new system]."