Wireless Product Development
Spotlight
Company: Fastenal
Industry: Inventory Tracking
HQ: Winona, MN
Webpage: www.fastenal.com
Fastenal provides companies with the fasteners, tools, and supplies they need to manufacture products, build structures, protect personnel, and maintain facilities and equipment. The Fastenal story began in 1967 when Bob Kierlin pooled together $30,000 with four friends and opened the first Fastenal location, a 1,000 square foot shop in his hometown of Winona, MN. The original business plan was to dispense nuts and bolts via custom vending machines, but the idea proved to be ahead of its time. Several decades would pass before Fastenal finally popularized industrial vending.
Product/Project Highlights
IR Fast Bin
Client: Fastenal
- Realtime Inventory counts
- Low Energy Bluetooth communication
- Warehouse, factory floor or construction site application, any many more
- Battery power minimization firmware supports 5 year battery life for each Bin
- Scalable to 10,000 bins in a single location
- 3 Different bin sizes
Situation:
Fastenal desired an automated method of detecting and communicating the amount of inventory in stock bins without needing to send a person to every bin to count the inventory. They wanted a scalable system that would report inventory levels in 1,000's of bin in one factory in near real time.
IR Fast Bin
Client: Fastenal
Process:
Solid participated from the beginning through prototype testing and a small production run following our Phase Gate Process for product design and development. Involvement included all Industrial Design, electrical, firmware and mechanical engineering, design and project management. We started by working with Fastenal to summarise the product requirements, FCC requirements for this type of product and then developed multiple conceptual approaches to meet these requirements. Together with our Client, Solid developed the product architecture, physical form and user interfaces. Once the conceptual approach was refined and approved by our Client, Solid created a proof of concept bench top prototype to see how the use of LEDs and photo diodes worked to measure the filled state of a stock bin. With this proved out to a satisfactory level, Solid began the Detailed Design Phase. Three sizes of Bins, a Repeater and a Controller module were all designed in CAD software and engineering drawings were created. Solid then sourced suppliers and solicited proposals for both full prototyping and production quantities and for production tooling. Solid then coordinated all prototype component moulding, printed circuit build and final programming as well as assisting Fastenal in selecting a contract manufacturer for the product.
Solution:
Industrial Design techniques were used to create the user experience and make the system of components recognizable as related to Fastenal’s business. The embedded sensor system in the bin runs on a single coin cell and can function for up to 5 years before the battery will need to be replaced. The Repeater gathers inventory data from up to 100 bins and then sends this information to the Controller via a LoRa communications link. The bin can also send the information directly to the Controller via BLE. The Controller sends the bin data to the Fastenal web site based data base via WiFi, Cellular data, or a wired connection to the internet. With the FAST Bin system, Fastenal can monitor the inventory levels in 10,000 different inventory Bins at one site in near real time.
