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RFID Kanban System Pays Off for Bosch
"The flow of materials was faster than the information flow," Frost says, "and that was not acceptable. Accounting for things manually did not create value and lasted too long."
With the RFID system now in place, a manager receives orders electronically on the PC in his office and takes a reusable, laminated RFID-enabled kanban card out of a storage cabinet, encoding information to it with an interrogator manufactured by FEIG Electronic. The reader is constructed like a mouse pad and kept on the desk to encode each RFID tag with two numbers. In addition to the tag's unique ID code, to which other information is linked in the computer system, the tag also holds a production order number and a storing unit number that allows Bosch to track the part's production processes. The 13.56 MHz tags in the kanban cards conform to the ISO 15693 standard and are made by Texas Instruments.
The RFID-enabled kanban cards are brought to the beginning of the production line. There, the cards are read for the first time when a worker waves a card in front of a Scemtec RFID interrogator, then places it in the sleeve of a container. Bosch chose separate readers for different points in the application based on its judgment of which readers would work best at which junctures.
At this point, the data collected via RFID is transferred to Bosch's SAP system, which updates records with the exact time production began. This RFID data transfer is accomplished via middleware provided by business integration solutions provider Seeburger.
As the finished goods come off the production line, the container's RFID tag is interrogated once more, providing the company an exact record of its production. Such information could be needed if a car's part, for instance, were to fail and cause an accident.
Other workers then transfer the container of finished products to the warehouse, where a third tag reading takes place using a Data Logics handheld interrogator. This enables the system to be updated with information about which finished parts are stored in the warehouse.
Bosch prepares the parts for delivery and uses a Scemtec fixed interrogator to perform a fourth and final reading of all outbound containers stacked on a pallet. The system is updated with detailed information on the parts, as well as the time at which they were shipped to particular customers.
Bosch says the system has already paid for itself, though the company has declined to provide further details.
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With the RFID system now in place, a manager receives orders electronically on the PC in his office and takes a reusable, laminated RFID-enabled kanban card out of a storage cabinet, encoding information to it with an interrogator manufactured by FEIG Electronic. The reader is constructed like a mouse pad and kept on the desk to encode each RFID tag with two numbers. In addition to the tag's unique ID code, to which other information is linked in the computer system, the tag also holds a production order number and a storing unit number that allows Bosch to track the part's production processes. The 13.56 MHz tags in the kanban cards conform to the ISO 15693 standard and are made by Texas Instruments.
The RFID-enabled kanban cards are brought to the beginning of the production line. There, the cards are read for the first time when a worker waves a card in front of a Scemtec RFID interrogator, then places it in the sleeve of a container. Bosch chose separate readers for different points in the application based on its judgment of which readers would work best at which junctures.
At this point, the data collected via RFID is transferred to Bosch's SAP system, which updates records with the exact time production began. This RFID data transfer is accomplished via middleware provided by business integration solutions provider Seeburger.
As the finished goods come off the production line, the container's RFID tag is interrogated once more, providing the company an exact record of its production. Such information could be needed if a car's part, for instance, were to fail and cause an accident.
Other workers then transfer the container of finished products to the warehouse, where a third tag reading takes place using a Data Logics handheld interrogator. This enables the system to be updated with information about which finished parts are stored in the warehouse.
Bosch says the system has already paid for itself, though the company has declined to provide further details.
