Introduction
The customer: Pilkington Brazil
Pilkington Brazil Automotive, a subsidiary of the NSG Group and a global leader in glass manufacturing, operates a windshield production line in Caçapava, near São Paulo. Managing the flow of Returnable Transport Items (RTIs) across the supply chain — from raw material delivery to finished-product shipping — was creating inefficiencies that rippled through the entire operation.
SmartX HUB delivered the automated tracking solution they needed: RFID at every critical point, connected to RTI tracking workflows and Pilkington's SAP system.
The Challenge
Classic RTI pain points, at scale
Pilkington faced the full set of RTI management challenges: longer cycle times, fleet shrinkage, supply-chain bottlenecks, delayed orders, rising transportation costs, and a lack of accountability between trading partners. Without automated tracking, it was simply impossible to know where each asset was at any given moment.
Longer cycle times
Manual RTI flow slowed the whole production and shipping cycle.
Fleet shrinkage
RTIs went missing, forcing costly replacement of the reusable fleet.
Supply-chain bottlenecks
Bottlenecks and delayed orders drove up transportation costs.
No accountability
Lack of shared data left trading partners without accountability.
