Titan International is a manufacturer of off-road and all-road wheels and tires. As an Original Equipment Manufacturer with an international distribution channel that includes aftermarket, Titan is a company on the move. Based on an initiative by their leadership, Titan leadership felt that Oracle Cloud SCM would prepare them for the future. Titan implemented Oracle Cloud SCM at three North American locations initially, and is rolling Oracle Cloud out to four additional US locations in the next two years.
Search for a Mobile Partner
Knowing that Oracle Cloud would unite their systems across the globe, reduce IT costs and provide company-wide visibility, the team at Titan also wanted to eliminate all paper processes and manual inventory updates with a mobile solution.
“We wanted more timely inventory transactions and instant visibility into the movements of our materials – as well as an increase in inventory accuracy,” said Stacy Ripperda, IT Business Analyst.
Titan operations include moving large quantities of material from different areas of their plant. Beyond tracking material movement, Titan also wanted a solution that would provide production reports.
“We needed a partner to mirror Oracle Cloud in the manufacturing environment and one that has the breadth of implementation experience that RF-SMART has,” said Brandon Weber, Director of Supply Chain. “The size and activity in our facilities necessitated a mobile solution.”
“We wanted a simple solution that would not take a long time to implement,” said Stacy. Titan found that with RF-SMART.
Real-Time Functionality & Visibility
“RF-SMART has the flexibility to give us out-of-the-box functionality and to enable small configurations to work with our other systems,” said Stacy.
Included are transactions for receiving, item inquiry, putaway, label design and printing. Production employees are using RF-SMART on tablets and scanners to report pieces and print labels. With hundreds of tractor trailers on their 80 acre lot, it took hours to inventory their locations daily via manual processes. By looking up trailer locations on a mobile device, Titan employees are saving 20 labor hours a week.
By eliminating paperwork and the associated delays, Titan has improved the speed of receiving processes. The improved efficiency has also reduced the amount of time spent working weekends, which is saving Titan on labor costs.
RF-SMART has made tracking inventory movement through 1.5 million square feet easy, with Titan employees no longer spending time manually logging transactions and entering data. “I know we’re seeing all inventory movement in real-time. RF-SMART has given us the inventory visibility we wanted,” said Brandon. A more accurate inventory allows Titan to lower inventory levels.
Simple to Implement, Simple to Use
“RF-SMART was easy to implement. It gives us a lot of flexibility without over-complicating transactions,” said Brandon. During implementation and go-live, the RF-SMART and Titan teams worked together to ensure a smooth process, ensuring that RF-SMART functionality matched Titan’s business processes.
Stacy has also found the administration side of RF-SMART to be simple, from the way the workflows are set up to changing defaults. “It’s easy to understand, and I like the flexibility the administration tools offer for setting up workflows,” said Stacy. “RF-SMART allows you to control the steps you want, turn off what your users don’t need to see, default and auto-populate. All this simplifies transactions for the user, making it as easy as possible.”
Because of the ease of use, Titan employees quickly adopted the new technology. “The menus are very descriptive and RF-SMART prompts users to enter in part numbers and quantities. We like that RF-SMART is very step-by-step,” said Stacy. Because the user interface is simplified and intuitive, training new users is a quick process. They are using mobile hardware devices in many areas – from tablets mounted to forklifts to tablets in production to mobile scanners – as well as using RF-SMART to print labels. “I cannot emphasize enough how easy it is to use,” Stacy said.
On Track for Growth
What does the future hold for this growing company? As they continue to deploy Oracle Cloud to other locations, RF-SMART will be included in those implementations. They plan to start using RF-SMART cycle counting to eliminate costly physical inventories and roll-out RF-SMART packing functionality. The ultimate goal is that RF-SMART and Oracle Cloud SCM will provide accurate inventory, which will result in Titan continuing to improve working capital by carrying less inventory overall. Growth, savings and inventory accuracy are all on the horizon.