The Viewpoint Data Collection System uses a license plating approach to tracking inventory. This means that every container (be it a skid, roll, coil or a box) receives a label showing relevant information about the goods. More importantly, the label contains a unique serial number often referred to as a license plate.

This serial number points to two types of information about the container in the Viewpoint database. The first data set is the profile record. This is housed in the Viewpoint Tag Master file - there is one record per serial number. This record shows the current information about the container of goods including part number, quantity, original quantity, lot number, and location.

The second data set is the history against the serial number - one record per scanning transaction. These records show the container's path through the warehouse or factory. Record types include receiving, transfer, production, consumption and shipping. Each record type contains its own set of information relevant to the transaction type.

The consumption record, contains part number, quantity, serial number, parent part number and parent serial number. This allows Viewpoint to match serial numbers of production to consumed serial numbers at the production point. That translates to matching containers of production to containers of usage. This container level technique enables Viewpoint inquiries to give very powerful tracking information - particularly useful in the steel coil, fabric, or paper roll industries.

Typically in the steel industry, a major coil is slit into thinner coils. These thinner coils are sold or possibly formed into tube or other final products. It is imperative for manufacturers to trace the lot number through these processes - to determine what major coils created what slit coils or what major coil was used to create a given container of material.

Viewpoint assigns a unique serial number for each entity, be it major coil, slit coil or finished product. The Viewpoint database carries one record for each serial number with the lot number. The lot number will be the same for each entity of a given material batch. The consumption record for a given serial number will point to the parent serial number - the major coil. Viewpoint supports endless levels of parent/child serial number relationships.

How is the relationship between coils determined through the production process? The most common method is to scan serial numbers of major coils into production lines. Each time an item is produced the system matches the new label (and serial number) together with the serial number of the major coil currently at the production line.

The Viewpoint inquiries allow an operator to choose a major coil and determine what containers of finished product it went into. They also enable a user to locate all product created from a given lot number of material. Thanks to the scanning on the floor and the serial numbers, these inquiries quickly, and painlessly, enable an operator to track down material issues before product progresses through the production process or is shipped to a customer.

For more information about this and other Nutech products,
please contact the sales department at 800-830-8058.