When you are enjoying fresh and nutritious Alaskan cod, do you realize the "hard work" it takes to get this delicacy from the deep sea to your table? Do you realize that temperature control throughout the process has a critical impact on the quality of the fish? Do you understand the advanced logistics technology behind this delicious real-time electric forklift weighing system?

In the aquatic industrial park, you can see a busy but orderly scene: after the arrival of the vessel full of salvaged and frozen fish, the warehouse staff use RF terminals to scan the pallet number and confirm the receipt of the goods. The electric forklift delivers the goods to the designated warehouse according to the warehouse allocation information sent by the weighing system, scans the inventory information with the RF terminal, and the receipt information is sent back to SAPWM, and the warehousing operation is completed.

The whole warehousing process is organized and smooth. Thousands of tons of chilled fish unloaded from each vessel can be put into cold storage within a short time, thus ensuring the freshness and high quality of the fish. At the same time, the storage information is detailed and complete, the barcode immediately includes the name of the species, the name of the fishing vessel and the date of fishing and other informative data. These real-time "fresh" data not only meet the needs of the finished product sales process, but also make the future delivery, query, inventory and other operations become simple and efficient. And it is with SIEMENS advanced SCALANCEW wireless real-time transmission technology will be fish and information "double fresh" into reality.

2、Background of the project

As a world-renowned aquaculture giant, Pacific Enli International Holdings Group Limited (hereinafter referred to as "Pacific Enli Group") is mainly engaged in global procurement, transportation and supply of frozen seafood. Pacific Andes Foods Co., Ltd. is the direct subsidiary of Pacific Andes Group in Qingdao, integrating processing, transportation and trading of aquatic products. Its leading product, frozen cod series, is recognized as Grade A product by the international aquatic industry and enjoys a high reputation in the domestic and international aquatic industry.

According to Forbes Magazine: Pacific Enrich Group is the world's largest producer of fish fillets by volume. As China's per capita consumption of fish quadrupled in the 20 years from 1983 to 2003, Asia's emerging fishing industry boomed, and Pacific Andes, as a leader in the electric forklift weighing system industry, performed exceptionally well. The Group generated revenues of US$1.08 billion in 2007, with a net profit of US$40 million, tripling its 2001 sales.

In order to expand its production capacity to meet the growing demand, a new processing plant was built in Qingdao Hongdao in 2007. The first phase of the Hongdao project, with a total investment of about US$90 million, is expected to have a processing capacity of up to 60,000 tons per annum, which will be mainly engaged in the business of finishing products such as ready-to-eat food, and will be able to reach its full capacity in about 2 to 3 years after commencement of the operation.

At the same time, in order to reduce operational errors, improve efficiency, and strengthen management in cold storage operations, Pacific Enli Group decided to transform the original traditional business processes, implement SAP business systems, and establish a new IT system architecture. Moreover, in order to obtain the greatest advantage from the implementation of the new ERP system, Pacific Enli Group decided to adopt real-time logistics operation in the cold storage, and adopted the highly flexible and reliable program of wireless transmission for information transmission.

3、Overall situation of electric forklift weighing system

Due to the characteristics of the industry in which Pacific Enli Group is located and the characteristics of this project, the program design and implementation of the project has brought some difficulties: first of all, Pacific Enli is located in Hongdao, the temperature of the cold storage is set to -35 ℃ (now -28 ℃, at any time can be upgraded to -35 ℃), in such a low-temperature environment, to ensure the efficient and stable operation of the equipment itself puts forward a nearly "" demanding "" requirements. Secondly, the customer requires to complete the design and implementation of wireless solutions to realize seamless connection with SAP system, which is difficult to realize without powerful wireless products.

Based on the above requirements, SIEMENS electric forklift weighing device integrator Dematic provided a total solution for the Pacific Enrich Group, including (the device unified drive interface middleware system integrated with the SAP system), SIEMENS industrial-grade wireless access point SCALANCEW786 and classic wireless access point SCALANCEW788, which are specially designed for harsh environments, combined with LXE's low-temperature resistant wireless mobile terminals, Bluetooth scanning guns and barcode printers, as well as waterproof and freezing-resistant electronic labels. LXE's low-temperature resistant wireless mobile terminals, Bluetooth scanners and bar code printers, as well as waterproof and freezer-resistant electronic tags, are also incorporated.

The framework of the electric forklift weighing system design program can be compared to the human body's operating mechanism: SAP is equivalent to the human brain, and wireless terminals can be compared to the human hands and feet, the brain needs to command the hands and feet through the nervous system, and the role of the SIEMENS wireless products SCALANCE788/786 is equivalent to the nervous system. SAPWM module through the reliable transmission of the wireless system. The SAPWM module drives the underlying wireless terminal devices in a unified way, and then feeds back the execution of the devices to the WM module. When carrying out operations such as warehousing/out-of-store, SAPWM module sends out the corresponding instructions, how to flexibly and efficiently drive the terminal equipment in order to achieve the optimal utilization rate of the system is the main function of the control level equipment.

Take the warehousing process as an example: after the goods arrive at the warehouse, SAP system issued warehousing instructions, DEMATICPDS downloads/receives the receiving operation instructions from the WM module and automatically distributes the instructions to the underlying equipment to drive the hardware to complete the task, and the PDS will be flexibly configured in accordance with the system's busy situation during the assignment. Immediately thereafter, the warehouse personnel use the RF terminal to scan and record the pallet serial number barcode to confirm the receipt of goods. Then, the forklift delivers the goods to the designated warehouse according to the warehouse allocation information sent by the information system, and scans the inventory information with the RF terminal, and the receiving result is sent back to the SAPWM module after being organized and summarized by the middleware.

This series of actions must be ensured by reliable wireless transmission.

4、Solution

Pacific Enli Group's cold storage in Hongdao mainly stores raw fish and finished fish products and other goods, cold storage temperature is set to -28 ℃ ~ -35 ℃ low-temperature environment makes the selection and operation of equipment is quite unique. Such as the use of steel structure in the warehouse drive-in shelves and fully enclosed forklifts, workers need to scan bar codes through the forklift weighing glass, forklift weighing installed within the vehicle-mounted terminal, at the same time, in order to enhance the flexibility of each set of vehicle-mounted terminals are also equipped with a lightweight wireless bluetooth scanning gun, when the need arises, the workers can get out of the car and carry the wireless scanning gun for bar code scanning; frozen environment, the shell of the equipment, the battery, As well as the internal circuit board structure and so on are required to make special treatment, at the same time need equipment with anti-condensation effect.

At the same time, for a large warehouse logistics weighing system, how to quickly complete some of the actions included in the warehouse out of the warehouse through wireless transmission, the need for strong wireless product support.

In this program, the integrator chose SIEMENSSCALANCEW786, a wireless access point dedicated to high-temperature environments (operating temperature: -40°C to +70°C; can be operated simultaneously in 2.4G and 5G operating modes). In warehouse logistics applications, how to arrange the wireless network to achieve seamless signal coverage is also an important aspect.