On the radio

InTech, Jun 2006 by Bapat, Vivek, Somogyi, Andreas, Guti�rrez, Alfonso, Veeramani, Raj

RFID moves upstream from supply chain and into heart of manufacturing operations

RFID is having a broad impact on manufacturing operations, including information management, manufacturing execution, quality control, compliance, tracking and genealogy, asset management, inventory visibility, and labor productivity.

For years, manufacturers have made investments in providing production with supply chain information it depends on to optimize inventory, while at the same time improving production efficiency, flexibility, and responsiveness.

Accurate, detailed, and timely information delivered by new generation MES systems is critical in getting the most value out of existing investments in automation.

For a broad cross-section of manufacturers that have not made substantial investments in MES, RFID provides a method to close some functional gaps, particularly related to tracking and genealogy and compliance management. For these manufacturers, a combination of RFID investments and incremental, hut functionally focused, MHS applications (such as tracking and tracing) can quickly and cost-effectively deliver functionality that parallels comprehensive MES solutions.

An Accenture white paper describes in detail the potential opportunities to leverage RFID on the plant floor. RFID initiatives will immediately influence these key areas.

Manufacturing information

By combining RFID with existing manufacturing information systems investments that drive both MES and ERP a much more potent information supply can drive production efficiencies, asset utilization, quality, and other production measures to much higher levels.

For a broad cross-section of manufacturers, RFID technology potentially provides a means to close some functional gaps, such as those related to compliance management, tracking, and genealogy.

By applying RFID technology incrementally across the plant floor, manufacturers can seamlessly integrate the new information captured by RFID, without disruption into existing, reliable, and industrially hardened control, visualization, and information infrastructure. Existing MES systems can then he updated to deliver the necessary RFID data management and reporting and also synchronize production with the RFID-enabled supply chain.

In order to deliver information from RFID downstream out to the supply chain (ERP) and upstream into production (MES), existing information infrastructure must convert to co-exist with emerging EPC standards and IT that includes software and application management such as device brokers.

Once this information shares across the enterprise and plant floor, receiving, manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping operations must coordinate and execute in the context of orders and customers.

Regardless of how much effort and dollars go to RFID on the enterprise level, poor management and execution of RFID efforts at the plant level could drive down potential benefits.

For manufacturers, it is becoming increasingly important to design and integrate RFID information and solve connectivity issues related to plant floor and warehousing execution in such a way that new information integrates into plant floor reliably and through industrially hardened conduits.

In addition, deploying an REID network for a manufacturer is of little or no value unless the information it provides is accessible using an array of hardware and software that ties together and back into the plant for execution and action.

For the most part, manufacturers have to take raw data from RFID readers and determine how to get it into MES and control systems that drive manufacturing. In addition to delivering the right information at the right time to an MES or control system, the rules concerning manufacturing execution such as control, scheduling, routing, tracking, and monitoring must all change to collect and be responsive to new RFID-information.

In addition to managing operations on the plant floor, warehousing operations must also receive support from an information perspective to ensure the right products get to the supply chain at the right time.

Quality control and compliance

RFID has the potential of complementing MES in terms of providing new streams of real-time data that can support existing Eean and Six-Sigma programs.

RFID information can ensure the correct labor, machine, tooling, and components are available and ready to use at each processing step, thereby eliminating paperwork and reducing downtime.

Furthermore, process steps could be controlled, modified, and even reconfigured in real time as inbound materials, parts, and assemblies move through manufacturing.

As raw materials turn into finished assemblies, triggers could be set off, controlling either inbound materials and thereby impacting work-in-process inventory or post-process inventory.

By tagging raw materials with detailed specification information, alerts could automatically trigger at mixing operations if an incorrect formulation is imminent. This can help reduce scrap rates and increase yield, assuring a high degree of reliability and quality in processing.