St Regis Paper Company goes real-time wireless with Sandpiper

St Regis, the UK's largest manufacturer and recycler of paper is part of the DS Smith Plc group of companies. DS Smith Plc is an international Group focused on the production and distribution of a wide range of premium paper-based products used for industrial and consumer retail packaging and office stationery supplies. The Group holds strong positions in many of the markets in which it operates. These include recycled papermaking and corrugated packaging in the UK and Europe, heavy duty corrugated, bag-in-box and corrugated plastic packaging also in Europe; and office products wholesaling in the UK, France, Ireland, Germany and Spain.

Through continuous investment in the latest papermaking technology, St Regis has maintained its position as market leader for many years, setting the standards in innovation and customer service. With a turnover exceeding £300 million per annum and 1800 employees, St Regis operates from five mills and has the capacity to manufacture almost 1 million tonnes of paper every year. As the UK's leading manufacturer of corrugating grades used for conversion into corrugated packaging St. Regis utilises recovered raw material for the manufacture of all its paper products. Consequently, St Regis is at the forefront of technological developments, which have led to recycled paper becoming a high quality alternative to more expensive virgin grade.

St Regis also manufactures a wide range of Industrial Products, where the same state of the art technology is applied during the manufacture and conversion process. St Regis is the leading manufacturer of core-board, envelope grades, plasterboard liners and highly specialised grades for the educational and stationery sectors.

The largest mill, located at Kemsley in Sittingbourne, Kent, manufactures over 550,000 tonnes of paper every year and is one of the most technically advanced mills in the use of recycling paper. In order to provide additional storage capacity for 20,000 tonnes of finished product, as part of its strategy to deliver from stock to improve customer service levels, a new build warehouse development was completed in 2003 extending storage by 13,300 sq.m.
Existing technology across strategic engineering and distribution operations was becoming due for replacement and in order to achieve the growing manufacturing output targets, St Regis reviewed its Information Systems and use of technology to identify the means that would improve accuracy of information whilst reducing operational costs.

Engineering Stores Solution

The engineering stores operation's role is to support and maintain the mill production machinery. In order to ensure 24/7 operation, inventory accuracy and spare parts stock availability is mission critical.
St Regis historically used paper based systems with manual system updates sometimes resulting in stock inaccuracies leading to disruption to the mill manufacturing processes. The implementation of a new enterprise-wide Service Management system now provides full parts inventory visibility, traceability and automated processes through the use of a real-time wireless data communications system supplied by Sandpiper.

Goods-in receipt of spare parts, issuing of spare parts to the engineers, complete inventory management tasks and stock control are some of the transactions supported by the real-time system. During goods-in receipt parts are booked in to stock which automatically generates barcode identification labels printed using a special non-tear polyester label media.

Sandpiper surveyed, supplied and installed the Intermec Technologies AutoID hardware comprising wireless infrastructure, portable hand held computers (supporting Citrix terminal client software) and industrial barcode printers. Sandpiper also assisted with the label media specification, an important consideration in view of the volume of parts throughput, extended shelf-life expectation for certain parts and exposure to oils and chemicals typically encountered with engineering service parts. The engineering system has been deployed to the Kemsley, Taplow, Wansbrough, and Darwen engineering operations.

Warehouse Solution

During the planning phase of the new warehouse, it was also determined that the current IT system at Kemsley would no longer be able to fulfil the increased demands of product distribution as a result of increased distribution of finished goods. The existing technology was becoming obsolete and therefore more expensive to maintain and as such performance was no longer meeting requirements.

Integral with the implementation of a new ERP system Sandpiper was again selected to deliver the AutoID requirements that would be involved.
Sandpiper helped by providing recommendations for equipment, installation and support on how to go live with the new solution. Due to St Regis' operations being 24/7, it was crucial that the manufacturing machinery was only unavailable (off-line) when scheduled by the internal production team. The project manager, Alan Carver, commented: "We are very excited about the potential of this venture to increase profitability and, more importantly, to improve our service to customers."

Sandpiper initially performed a full site survey analysis of the new Kemsley warehouse to establish the requirements. Having recommended Intermec equipment to St Regis for its engineering stores system, St. Regis was keen to maintain continuity, and Sandpiper's recommendation was for Intermec's Radio Frequency (RF) system utilising 802.11b spread spectrum wireless technology that would provide a) the necessary coverage b) system performance and c) an in-built future migration path that would allow St. Regis to take advantage of future technology advancements. Sandpiper also recommended the Intermec vehicle mounted computers with advanced long range scanners to be used for scanning finished reel paper as it was collected from the out-feed production lines.

When managing this type of product (each reel can weigh up to 2 tonnes) optimised storage methodologies and stock accuracies are a must to ensure efficient warehouse operations. Because of the weight and sheer size of products unnecessary stock movements and handling is to be avoided wherever possible to reduce the potential risk for damage and running costs of expensive materials handling equipment. Therefore the use of reliable barcode driven real-time stock identification is vital to ensure product visibility during the booking into warehouse, location storage confirmation and final loading to despatch operations.

Due to the compatibility of the Intermec equipment being able to interface to the new system (using a terminal emulation client) the transition to the new AutoID system was relatively problem free. The warehouse team found the new scanners easy to use and found them a lot faster to process information during the test phase.
Once the new wireless system was installed Sandpiper assisted St Regis with the 'go live' project and was on hand to deal with any teething problems should they have arisen. "Sandpiper was of great assistance during our 'go live' project and kept the shut down of each machine to a minimum allowing us to keep our level of production consistent with customer demands. Sandpiper's Professional Services team also helped us with other technical issues which were outside of their remit", stated Martin Baker, Divisional Logistics Manager.

The improved reliability of the new RF System has enabled St Regis to roll-out and replicate the Kemsley solution to several other manufacturing sites to date. "Sandpiper is looking forward to helping St Regis deploy and support the new solution to all its sites in due course and continuing to provide technical support during the years to come", stated Simon Hagenbuch, Managing Director.

Conclusion

The introduction of the two wireless-based AutoID solutions in the engineering stores and warehouse operations has helped ensure that St Regis can operate its mills 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and have reduced the level of downtime considerably.
In conjunction with the new warehouse, St Regis has been able to improve customer service levels with on time order delivery, every time. New orders can now be efficiently and quickly fulfilled from stock representing significant benefits to its customers who themselves operate just in time manufacturing processes.

This project has played an important part in ensuring St Regis maintains its position as market leader by continuing to set the bench-mark standards in innovation and customer service.