Coca Cola Case Study
Coca-Cola’s Article Inventory System
Problems and Background In the factory of Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd. several sorts of popular soft drinks are produced, such as Coca-Cola Light, Fanta or Sprite. The circulation of these goods is very fast. After being in stock in the warehouse for a short time, they are soon delivered to consumers and are replaced by recently produced items. In the finished goods warehouse, stocks of 250 different products on 40000 pallets occupy 10001200 storage spaces. For the company, accurate and up-to-date information on the inventory is of primary importance, so daily, weekly and monthly inventories are taken of the products. In order to guarantee accuracy, the same stocks are checked several times by different inventory taking ’teams’. The results gained by applying this method, are compared during the process, consequently, the inventory system can guarantee accurate results. This work used to be carried out at Coca-Cola Hungary Ltd. by using Symbol PDT3100 terminals, but their production and component supply had been finished definitively, and a new device had to be found to replace them. Since the company had been fully satisfied with Motorola MC70 devices in other fields, the application of these modern, multi-functional PDAs seemed to be a good solution for this purpose as well.
Solution The new Article Inventory solution for the client’s MC70 devices was prepared by BCS Hungary Ltd. The new system had to preserve the functionality of the previous system, since Coca Cola Hungary Ltd. had not planned any changes concerning the background structures. Information on the inventory which is to be checked during inventory taking is provided by the business management system (ERP) for the Article Inventory. Perfect data transfer (interface) between them had to be solved as well. The background database is operated by using Microsoft SQL.
The system consists of two parts: a PC user interface and a mobile user interface.
The
Problems and Background In the factory of Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd. several sorts of popular soft drinks are produced, such as Coca-Cola Light, Fanta or Sprite. The circulation of these goods is very fast. After being in stock in the warehouse for a short time, they are soon delivered to consumers and are replaced by recently produced items. In the finished goods warehouse, stocks of 250 different products on 40000 pallets occupy 10001200 storage spaces. For the company, accurate and up-to-date information on the inventory is of primary importance, so daily, weekly and monthly inventories are taken of the products. In order to guarantee accuracy, the same stocks are checked several times by different inventory taking ’teams’. The results gained by applying this method, are compared during the process, consequently, the inventory system can guarantee accurate results. This work used to be carried out at Coca-Cola Hungary Ltd. by using Symbol PDT3100 terminals, but their production and component supply had been finished definitively, and a new device had to be found to replace them. Since the company had been fully satisfied with Motorola MC70 devices in other fields, the application of these modern, multi-functional PDAs seemed to be a good solution for this purpose as well.
Solution The new Article Inventory solution for the client’s MC70 devices was prepared by BCS Hungary Ltd. The new system had to preserve the functionality of the previous system, since Coca Cola Hungary Ltd. had not planned any changes concerning the background structures. Information on the inventory which is to be checked during inventory taking is provided by the business management system (ERP) for the Article Inventory. Perfect data transfer (interface) between them had to be solved as well. The background database is operated by using Microsoft SQL.
The system consists of two parts: a PC user interface and a mobile user interface.
The