Spare Parts Movement Tracking And Warranty Management

Think about the last expensive electronic gadget you bought. Did you fill out the warranty card and send it in? Do you even know when the warranty ends? Most of us aren't that great at keeping up with our warranties, which is a shame – odds are you probably could have fixed that broken car stereo for free, but since you've waited two years, you now have to foot the bill.

Now imagine keeping track of four thousand warranties for different products you own, all purchased at different times.

A semiconductor company was suffering from excess inventory of vacuum pumps and faces high scrap/rework costs in the event of an outage due to a lack of pump availability. Vacuum pumps are a critical part of the manufacturing process; they create the proper conditions for semiconductor fabrication. The pumps were sent to a repair facility, operated by the pump supplier, for refurbishment on a predetermined schedule or when they fail. Transportation between these facilities was provided by a 3PL company who also maintains the semiconductor manufacturer's warehouse and stores its spare pumps. The semiconductor manufacturer was facing increasing levels of pump inventory due to poor visibility of pumps in transit, at the repair depot, and in storage and the occasionally excessive long cycle times for the repair process (repair times for the return process averaged 27 days with -5/ 50 day variability). Further complicating the situation for the semiconductor manufacturer was that the use of pumps was often unpredictable. Finally, the semiconductor manufacturer was not able to systemically track SLA agreements with its suppliers or determine if a pump had failed while under warranty.

Pump Movements are captured at the floor level by RFID and recorded by InSync's ControlZone Software Application, creating a real-time map of product location at any given facility. InSync's SiteManager Software Applications manage the three RFID-enabled control zones at the sub-fab lines, as well as three RFID zones at the warehouse and one at the repair facility.

The SiteManager lets operators run reports on control zone movements, view the RFID read history, configure zone rules and parameters, and monitor overall system health.

InSync's TrackingServer serves as the master dashboard for all three locations, giving a full picture of pump movements and location. The TrackingServer alerts operators when pre-defined rules are broken, or movements don't correspond with instructions. InSync's eBusiness Server handles the messaging between locations; the software automatically issues an ASN and a Purchase Order to the repair facility when the pump is sent for refurbishing.