P-trak
P-trak
is a Warehouse Tracking System designed from the ground up around wireless
devices, bar coding and RFID technology. It is intended as a companion to
corporate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as SAP and Mincom's
Ellipse, in contrast to standalone Warehouse Management Systems. P-trak is
not a middleware solution that simply maps the ERP user interface to a
mobile wireless device, and is consequently not constrained by the
performance, responsiveness or reliability of the host system.
Features & Benefits
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Drastically Reduced Discrepancies: Moving to a streamlined paperless system can drastically reduce stock discrepancies. For example, Alcan have quoted a 10-fold reduction in discrepancies since implementation of P-trak, with ongoing improvements. (Discrepancies reduced from >20% prior to an electronic system, to 8% at end of year 1 with P-trak, to <2% at end of year 4)
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Improved Redundancy & Security: By implementing a local database coupled with a persistent queuing mechanism that guarantees message delivery, P-trak can operate independently during ERP host outages or link failures and then transfer details of stock changes to the host when it becomes available again.
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Easy Discrepancy Resolution: Buffering warehouse operations from the Enterprise allows any stock discrepancies to be investigated and resolved before committing stock adjustments to a system with financial accounting consequences.
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Tracking Beyond the Warehouse: P-trak supports unlimited warehouses/areas and locations within each area. Areas can be used to define any location inside or outside the warehouse - expansion is limited only by server capacity.
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Individual Item Tracking: Unique stock serial numbers (SSN) can be used to track individual stock item movements for audit purposes. For example, rotable spares can be traced through their whole lifecycle, in the warehouse or out in the plant. Significant benefits can be derived in emergency breakdown situations from rapid and reliable identification of suitable spares.
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Simple User Interface: The mobile barcode user interface has been specially designed to suit the simple and repetitive operations usually performed by warehouse staff, requiring an absolute minimum of keyboard interaction. For example, an operator can scan an item once to find out about it, or scan it twice to take it out (pick or transfer) - no keystrokes required.
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Fast Response: P-trak's efficient real-time transaction engine has been designed to provide very fast responses to client requests at the user interface. Picking, put away and stock query response times on a 50,000 line item database typically measure in the order or tenths of a second, even on moderate PC server hardware.
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Flexible, Modular Architecture: P-trak is built around a high performance, real-time messaging subsystem, with each basic warehousing and communications function implemented as a separate module. Existing modules can be customised with minimal version control and testing implications, and new modules can be added as required.
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Wide Platform Support: Supports Microsoft Windows, Unix and Linux Operating Systems, Oracle & open source PostgreSQL databases, standard TCP/IP LAN and wireless networking technologies.
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Offset License Costs: P-trak is intended as a companion to ERP systems, but can also provide cost benefits by reducing the number of ERP client terminals required in the warehouse - offset P-trak implementation costs against the savings in ERP client licenses.
Download a summary of the P-Trak Solution here.
