Brandon Lanning, Sr. Manager Tech & Data Platforms
When I meet with manufacturers, many who have been in business for decades, I have to ask an uncomfortable question: Do you know where your parts are? These companies have successfully provided complete products to their customers for years; it’s easy to see why they believe they have effective inventory management systems.
However, many manufacturers are still manually tracking and managing inventory, leaving the door wide open to inefficient, error-prone processes and increased operational costs. In worst-case scenarios, companies don’t see how much time and money they’re losing through a thousand paper cuts. A decades-old status quo will no longer keep up with competitors who never face downtime due to missing parts, especially when some manufacturers need a full year to complete a cycle count.
TraceCor, Ancor’s operations intelligence platform, offers real time visibility, inventory management, speed, and control and compliance while giving manufacturers the tools necessary to protect margins and outpace the competition.
Ancor does not operate that way. We do not start with a solution and go looking for someone to sell it to. We start with the customer’s actual problem, then build backward from it.
That requires listening before selling.
It means asking better questions, challenging assumptions, and refusing to recommend a solution until we understand what is actually broken. Whether the right answer already exists in our portfolio or has to be built from scratch, the discipline is the same:
Understand the problem before proposing the solution.
Building From a Pain Point
TraceCor grew from our flagship inventory management system (IMS) into our all-encompassing operations intelligence platform. It was created when an automotive OEM came to us with a clear operational concern: its plant produced vehicles around the clock alongside a sister warehouse of non-production parts that wasn’t staffed 24/7. Parts were often misplaced by non-warehouse personnel covering gaps or due to simple human error. The stakes were immediate: if a critical part wasn’t where it should have been when it was needed, the production line went down.
We worked with our customer to develop TraceCor IMS, identifying a few part categories to track: critical parts that, if missing, bring the entire line to a halt; consumable parts that have to be replaced frequently; miscellaneous items such as wiring and small components; and on-request items that are not stocked but ordered as needed. TraceCor’s IMS tag portfolio works across any combination of these categories, giving each part a traceable home.
The signature differentiator in the TraceCor IMS is its “Find My” feature – when something is put away incorrectly, a code lookup locates it immediately. As a complete inventory management tool, TraceCor IMS drives labor savings for warehouse operators and traceability for supply chain accountability.
Ancor works with a range of labels that can be placed on any material. Users simply tag assets with these labels and scan and assign them using the TraceCore IMS mobile handheld device. Once in the system, assets can be located, audited and managed in the TraceCor app. The system is scalable for businesses of all sizes and runs on an Android operating system for ease of integration, flexibility and speed.
Tiered levels of TraceCor’s IMS technology can go beyond audits, allowing users to report on specific inventory cadences. Our next goal is to integrate the TraceCor IMS with our clients’ enterprise resource planning software systems, ensuring traceability is linked to existing workflows for tracking stock levels and material movement in and out of warehouses.
Traceability as a Foundation
In highly regulated industries such as automotive, medical or government, traceability is a must-have for teams working to meet regulations and respond quickly to audits, inspections or regulatory reviews. However, it’s important to all companies to support compliance, quality control and operational visibility, helping manufacturers respond quickly in the case of a recall by determining where parts were produced and distributed, as well as the products they were ultimately used in.
With TraceCor’s IMS, not only can our clients answer our uncomfortable question with a resounding “yes,” but they can reduce downtime and labor costs while outpacing the competition and providing the best possible outcome for their customers.
ABOUT ANCOR
Smart connectivity, data solutions and digital transformation to help industries evolve and lead.
Ancor is a technology company that builds software systems to digitally represent and manage real-world assets and compliance. Our divisions specialize in label digital twins, real-time asset visibility across warehouses and supply chains, battery management systems and innovation where we design and build new platforms that solve complex customer challenges.
To learn more about Ancor, visit our website at www.weareancor.com.
