# Raw material to finished goods at Vedanta

> RFID across copper and aluminium smelters, with fixed readers tracking the yard-to-plant moves nobody has time to scan and handhelds covering everything else.

- **Page** - https://iotready.com/case-studies/vedanta-smelter-inventory
- **Client** - Vedanta Aluminium and Sterlite Copper
- **Published** - 2023-06-01
- **Industry** - [Heavy Manufacturing](https://iotready.com/industries/heavy-manufacturing.md)
- **Solution** - [Warehouse Management](https://iotready.com/solutions/warehouse-management.md)

## Results

- **40%** Fewer inventory discrepancies
- **100%** Batch traceability, raw material to product
- **Real time** Yard to plant visibility

## The problem

Vedanta runs large copper and aluminium smelters that handle thousands of
tonnes a day. Ingots, billets and rods were tracked by hand from receiving
through the yards to the production lines, and the physical stock and the SAP
record drifted apart. At that scale a percentage point of discrepancy is a
large number.

Finished goods needed a physical verification before dispatch, which held
vehicles up. Stores held thousands of consumables, tools, spare parts and PPE,
on manual logs. And a quality question could not be answered by tracing a
finished product back to the material it came from.

## Raw material

Incoming metal is weighed and tagged at receiving in one pass. Material that
arrives untagged gets an RFID label printed on the spot. Fixed readers at the
yard and plant boundaries pick up the big movements without anyone stopping to
scan, and handhelds cover verification, cycle counts and location updates.

The result is that the yard and the plant are two separate, current numbers
rather than one figure from last week, and the goods receipt and material
transfer post themselves to SAP as the metal moves.

## Finished goods

Product is tagged as it leaves the line, and the tag carries the link back to
the raw material batch it came from, which is what makes a quality audit
answerable. Warehouse receiving, putaway and picking run off handheld RFID and
QR readers, and dispatch orders, transfer orders and inventory adjustments go
into SAP without a manual step.

## Stores

High value tools and equipment carry RFID tags instead of a sign-out book.
Spare parts are issued and returned against a QR scan. Handhelds run cycle
counts without stopping work, minimum and maximum levels raise their own
reorder alerts, and every item shows which department or contractor has it.

## Why this shape

Some movements are worth automating and some are not. Fixed readers handle the
yard to plant traffic, which is high volume and impossible to scan by hand.
Handhelds and an on-demand tag printer cover the edge cases: untagged material,
a spot check, a count. The same platform runs both, so the record is one record.

## What was deployed

- [RFID Reader](https://iotready.com/hardware/rfid-fixed-gate.md): One UHF platform, ordered as Long Range for dock doors and gates or Short Range for point-of-sale and desks - the same read event either way.
- [Label Management & Printing Station](https://iotready.com/hardware/label-printer.md): Puts an existing weighing scale and an off-the-shelf barcode printer under one central label catalogue, so the price and the weight on the label are the ones the system holds today.
- [Weighing Scale Data Logger](https://iotready.com/hardware/weighing-scale.md): Turns an existing RS232 scale into a connected station - weight and a scan together, shown on a jumbo display and published over Bluetooth LE.