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What is Material Flow?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Material flow is simply the flow of materials in your facility’s processes – from the moment raw materials enter the facility, to assembly, packaging, quality control, and finally shipment. When errors or delays occur, like items being wrongly packaged or taking twice as long as they were scheduled for, it can be quite costly to repeat these actions and keep process errors unsolved. It\u2019s therefore in the best interest of organizations to get informed of material flow errors in real-time and optimize this process immediately, for greater efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Challenges That Occur in the Production Process<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Without real-time transparency over the material flow using RTLS IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), it can be difficult to have control over operations in complex logistic or production environments. For example, if you needed information on how many items or assets are passing through a specific assembly line or intralogistics supply route, without RTLS IIoT it would have to be done manually with someone counting the throughput of each item (time + quantity) in every process step. For information on how much time a certain task takes, someone would have to stop the time of every asset movement at the assembly line or warehouse handling step, which takes a lot of time and can\u2019t be done efficiently without automation using a monitoring system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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There can also be external factors affecting material flow, with some of the biggest impacts on manufacturing and production being consumerism and globalization. With the increasing use of digital tools and social media, consumers are demanding more e-commerce services, making trends change at a rapid pace. This can make it quite difficult to keep up the flexibility to react to these changes, especially with production processes that don\u2019t utilize RTLS IIoT. Globalization also affects material flow, as global supply chains and outsourcing can cause serious delays, as seen throughout the pandemic. This is why having efficient end-to-end material flow visibility can give organizations a meaningful competitive advantage.
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How to Optimize Material Flow with IIoT featured digital twin
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Investing in RTLS IIoT is the key to optimizing processes with the real-time visibility that material flow offers. Innovations such as INTRA<\/strong>NAV, an Inpixon company\u2019s material flow solution<\/a><\/strong> help address challenges in production, by automating the process using ERP data interfaces, sensors, and Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/intranav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Header-7.png\")
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When all required process-relevant assets of your facilities are equipped with RTLS sensors or virtually linked to the data-endpoint, they can capture data on everything being tracked such as identification info about the asset, location information in real-time, temperature, shock, and more. With all assets monitored, assembly lines, forklifts, and other aspects of the facility being tracked, they can all then get a virtual representation of themselves, called a digital twin<\/strong><\/a>. That way, an organization is able to see how their entire facility is operating digitally and get end-2-end information about their production processes all on a single dashboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
INTRA<\/strong>NAV.IO<\/strong> & INTRA<\/strong>LYTICS Live Demo of the RTLS IoT Platform
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