Inventory control of large items is relatively simple to manage and control, however, have you considered how you monitor the stock levels of small items such as screws or nuts and bolts? Regular manual stock taking is feasible, but labour intensive and can be prone to error. One solution is to use the weight of the parts as the measure of inventory and by placing the storage bins on weigh scales this is possible. It has been demonstrated that low energy Bluetooth weigh bins, powered by indoor ambient light, can reliably be adopted to deliver real time stock data for small components in a warehouse or stockroom. Weigh scales have been designed that are powered by energy harvested ambient light and able to communicate via low power BLE to a back-end monitoring system. Field trials were performed with Codegate's G1 Unmanned Store, a modified container that is designed to be a mobile storeroom equipped with prototype smart light powered weigh bins. The weight of storage bins was used to determine the number of parts being held in stock in real time. The advantages of using a weigh scale storage bin powered by energy harvested light is that they are very low maintenance with no requirement to change the battery at regular intervals and alleviating the need to provide mains power to individual bins in a racking and storage system. This significantly improves operational efficiency, ensures accurate stock level data and enables easy reconfiguration of the stock room or warehouse as needs change. For more information please download the white paper below, originated by Codegate's co-collaborator, Lightricity.
