Thorlabs Achieves Accuracy and Efficiency Goals with RF-SMART
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
- Asia
- Europe
Country
- China
- France
- Germany
- Japan
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- United States
Product
- RF-SMART
- Microsoft Dynamics AX
Tech Stack
- Automated Data Collection
- ERP System
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
- Waste Reduction
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- Renewable Energy
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Quality Assurance
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Warehouse Automation
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
- Training
About The Customer
Thorlabs is a market-leading designer and manufacturer of photonics equipment for research, manufacturing, and biomedical applications. Thorlabs was founded in 1989 by Alex Cable, a Bell Labs research physicist. Headquartered in Newton, New Jersey, Thorlabs operates internationally with more than 500 employees. Manufacturing and sales offices are located in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, China, and Japan. They provide high-tech and often customized equipment to companies, government agencies, and individuals involved in the aerospace, renewable energy, defense, security, medical, biotech, telecommunications, or electronics industries.
The Challenge
For Thorlabs, providing superior customer service is as much a priority requirement as maintaining their quality certifications. Their challenges? Continue to be the leader in supplying sophisticated equipment to one of the fastest-growing high-tech industries, increase already high customer satisfaction, and eliminate costs. Their path? Increase the sophistication of internal processes by efficiently increasing automation. Thorlabs chose to focus on reducing errors in shipping their more than 12,000 products – some of which vary only slightly in shape, size and part number. Their specific operational goals were to achieve total customer service with same day shipping and zero errors, and fully implement LEAN principles.
The Solution
After a thorough review of available options, Thorlabs selected and implemented the RF-SMART automated data collection solution. With RF-SMART, they could eliminate shipping errors and extend the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics AX, the ERP system they had used satisfactorily for five years. “We found RF-SMART to fill our needs on three points,” said Sam Rubin, Senior Operations Manager, Thorlabs. “One, RF-SMART has a small, less intrusive footprint into Microsoft Dynamics AX. Two, it is a product fully maintained by RF-SMART’s developers and RF-SMART support. And, three RF-SMART allows maximum use of the Microsoft Dynamics AX built-in warehouse features we already owned.” Thorlabs’ implementation was simultaneous in their two largest manufacturing and distribution locations – the corporate headquarters in Newton, NJ and the German facility in Munich, Germany.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Monitoring & Predictive Maintenance App for a Solar Energy System
The maintenance & tracking of various modules was an overhead for the customer due to the huge labor costs involved. Being an advanced solar solutions provider, they wanted to ensure early detection of issues and provide the best-in-class customer experience. Hence they wanted to automate the whole process.
Case Study
Vestas: Turning Climate into Capital with Big Data
Making wind a reliable source of energy depends greatly on the placement of the wind turbines used to produce electricity. Turbulence is a significant factor as it strains turbine components, making them more likely to fail. Vestas wanted to pinpoint the optimal location for wind turbines to maximize power generation and reduce energy costs.
Case Study
Siemens Wind Power
Wind provides clean, renewable energy. The core concept is simple: wind turbines spin blades to generate power. However, today's systems are anything but simple. Modern wind turbines have blades that sweep a 120 meter circle, cost more than 1 million dollars and generate multiple megawatts of power. Each turbine may include up to 1,000 sensors and actuators – integrating strain gages, bearing monitors and power conditioning technology. The turbine can control blade speed and power generation by altering the blade pitch and power extraction. Controlling the turbine is a sophisticated job requiring many cooperating processors closing high-speed loops and implementing intelligent monitoring and optimization algorithms. But the real challenge is integrating these turbines so that they work together. A wind farm may include hundreds of turbines. They are often installed in difficult-to-access locations at sea. The farm must implement a fundamentally and truly distributed control system. Like all power systems, the goal of the farm is to match generation to load. A farm with hundreds of turbines must optimize that load by balancing the loading and generation across a wide geography. Wind, of course, is dynamic. Almost every picture of a wind farm shows a calm sea and a setting sun. But things get challenging when a storm goes through the wind farm. In a storm, the control system must decide how to take energy out of gusts to generate constant power. It must intelligently balance load across many turbines. And a critical consideration is the loading and potential damage to a half-billion-dollar installed asset. This is no environment for a slow or undependable control system. Reliability and performance are crucial.
Case Study
Airbus Soars with Wearable Technology
Building an Airbus aircraft involves complex manufacturing processes consisting of thousands of moving parts. Speed and accuracy are critical to business and competitive advantage. Improvements in both would have high impact on Airbus’ bottom line. Airbus wanted to help operators reduce the complexity of assembling cabin seats and decrease the time required to complete this task.
Case Study
Aircraft Predictive Maintenance and Workflow Optimization
First, aircraft manufacturer have trouble monitoring the health of aircraft systems with health prognostics and deliver predictive maintenance insights. Second, aircraft manufacturer wants a solution that can provide an in-context advisory and align job assignments to match technician experience and expertise.
Case Study
Remote Monitoring and Control for a Windmill Generator
As concerns over global warming continue to grow, green technologies are becoming increasingly popular. Wind turbine companies provide an excellent alternative to burning fossil fuels by harnessing kinetic energy from the wind and converting it into electricity. A typical wind farm may include over 80 wind turbines so efficient and reliable networks to manage and control these installations are imperative. Each wind turbine includes a generator and a variety of serial components such as a water cooler, high voltage transformer, ultrasonic wind sensors, yaw gear, blade bearing, pitch cylinder, and hub controller. All of these components are controlled by a PLC and communicate with the ground host. Due to the total integration of these devices into an Ethernet network, one of our customers in the wind turbine industry needed a serial-to-Ethernet solution that can operate reliably for years without interruption.
