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Zebra Technologies Corporation, an innovator at the frontline of business with solutions and partners that deliver a performance edge, has announced that BE Switchcraft has adopted Zebra’s radio frequency identification (RFID) solution to gain real-time visibility of its manufacturing process and financial data to help better fulfill its customers’ expectations.

Based in Adelaide, Australia, BE Switchcraft is a leading manufacturer of customised electrical switchboards for large building applications such as the Parliament House Canberra, Adelaide Convention Centre and Port Moresby Football Stadium.

Each switchboard is tailored to the customers’ requirements based on the needs of their respective building projects, which makes it a critical component. Therefore, BE Switchcraft needs to constantly update its customers on their switchboards’ manufacturing progress. As its business undergoes rapid growth, BE Switchcraft’s manual tracking process could no longer keep up with the increased workload. It needed to enhance its existing tracking process with automation to make updates timelier and more accurate.

“We needed real-time visibility into what was happening on our manufacturing floor,” said Anthony Spadavecchia, Managing Director, BE Switchcraft. “We started off with manual processes which were ineffective because the data collected became outdated before we could even analyse it. We then upgraded to a barcode scanning solution. While this had its merits, it required physical scanning of the switchboards and their accompanying documents by our staff, which was not fully optimised for our manufacturing workflows. To continue our rapid growth rate, we needed to find an innovative partner who could help us deploy an even better solution.”

To enhance BE Switchcraft’s processes, Zebra PartnerConnect business partner, Datanet, introduced an RFID solution which included Zebra’s FX9600 Fixed RFID readers, complemented by Zebra-compatible RFID antennas and an RFID label printer. This solution helps the BE Switchcraft team gain real-time visibility into each stage of its switchboard manufacturing process. The data collected is integrated with BE Switchcraft’s MYOB enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to provide valuable updates on the status of each project and financial data associated with the projects in production.

“We worked closely with BE Switchcraft to truly understand their challenges before recommending Zebra’s RFID solution, and subsequently helping with the implementation,” said Steve Jenkins, State Manager / RFID Consultant at Datanet.

“We are very excited that our RFID solution has helped BE Switchcraft achieve real-time visibility for its manufacturing operations,” said Tom Christodoulou, Sales Vice President of Australia and New Zealand at Zebra Technologies. “With this robust automated data capture solution in place, BE Switchcraft can now further differentiate themselves in the eyes of their customers while simultaneously supporting their continued rapid growth.”

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