Jul 01, 2013Vehnet, a UK-based IT company focused on automotive logistics, has partnered with RF Code to offer a radio frequency identification solution for automobile manufacturers and logistics firms to track finished vehicles prior to their shipment to customers. The solution, which combines Vehnet's vehicle- and asset-tracking software and RF Code's active RFID tags and readers and Zone Manager software, is also being used to monitor components' location and status prior to their assembly into a car or truck.
The solution is designed to provide users with an affordable active RFID solution, the company explains—by locating vehicles within a specific zone, rather than providing more granular location data, requiring a large network of readers—and enables Vehnet's software to determine the vehicle's status according to that location information. The software can then provide management data related to workflow, such as the planning of finishing work and shipping, according to that status.
Vehnet provides software for tracking and managing equipment and vehicles at manufacturing sites and storage yards. The firm has spent the past eight or nine years testing automatic-identification technology to make it easier for customers to locate their vehicles within storage yards and workshops, according to Steve Jones, Vehnet's managing director. Finished vehicles can often be stored within a manufacturer's yard containing tens of thousands of similar cars or trucks, while each vehicle has features specific to particular customers. Locating a given vehicle manually can be very time-consuming, Jones reports. However, he adds, that is still the method employed by most automotive companies and their logistics providers, though others utilize a technology such as bar-coding.
Increasingly, the industry is seeking more efficient operations in which, in some cases, a vehicle can be built to order and then be moved directly from the assembly line to the shipping area. If, however, a car's location is unavailable to management or those on the assembly floor, its status may not be clear, and it may thus be moved several times—into storage, for example, and back out again—when it could have simply been loaded onto a trailer or train and then shipped.
Vehnet's Advance software is designed to enable automotive manufacturers to manage their product inventory, provide information regarding each item's location and status at the factory and in the yard, and track shipments to other sites. Although the Advance suite can be used to build a yard plan to identify where particular products should be kept, and provide operation management as the vehicles are stored or shipped, it cannot provide the location data required to view where those cars are located at any given time.
While seeking a method to obtain location data automatically, Vehnet looked into the use of bar-code labels and scanners, passive and active RFID tags with fixed or handheld readers, and combinations of auto-ID and GPS technologies. All of these alternatives, the firm notes, could provide location data that could be fed to Vehnet's own software platform.
In addition, the company has developed a module within its Advance software package known as Visualiser, in order to provide graphical images identifying tags' locations within a yard.
There were some limitations, however, to the technologies tested, Jones says. For example, he states, "We've tried passive [RFID] in narrow choke points," but the read rate was not 100 percent. Once a car or truck passed a choke point, its location was no longer known.
One Vehnet customer, Jones says, has installed a Zebra Technologies Wherenet 2.4 GHz real-time location system (RTLS) that identifies the locations of vehicles per space within its yard. However, he notes, for many automotive companies and logistics firms, an RTLS solution is too expensive, due not only to the high cost of the battery-powered tags, but also to the dense fixed reader infrastructure.
When RF Code contacted Vehnet regarding its own solution, Jones says, he found that the technology offers the long read range of active RFID, while being less expensive than the RTLS options—in large part because fewer fixed readers are installed, each representing a zone in which a vehicle can be identified, as opposed to its exact location. RF Code industrial sensor tags beacon at preset intervals, transmitting a 433 MHz signal using a proprietary air-interface protocol, explains Iain Bell, RF Code's sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for industrial and supply chain solutions.
The RF Code reading devices come with two built-in receivers (each of which can be used, thereby providing redundancy) or with two antennas (to create two read zones), and can transmit data to back-end software via an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. The tag could be attached to a vehicle's rear-view mirror, while a built-in motion sensor enables the tag to issue a real-time alert as soon as the car is moved. In that way, the software can be configured to launch specific actions once a vehicle is in motion.
With the RF Code and Vehnet solution, a vehicle would typically enter a yard following assembly—or following delivery by ship, rail or truck—and staff members would utilize a bar-code scanner to capture the bar-coded vehicle-identification number (VIN) on the side of the car. The workers would then also scan a bar code printed on the back of an RF Code tag, linked to the unique ID number encoded to the RFID chip. By scanning both bar codes, the user can create a record in the Vehnet software marrying the car's VIN with the tag ID. From that point forward, the vehicle will then be tracked while moving from one zone to another, which could include a parking area, or a workshop for final processing, such as painting.
Vehnet software can provide a user with instructions—via a handheld computer with a built-in GPS unit, and running a Vehnet application—indicating where the vehicle should next be parked, based on its status indicated in the software. This, Jones explains, minimizes the cost of labor and fuel that otherwise would be spent as employees drove around a yard searching for an appropriate parking space. When an individual places a vehicle where instructed, such as within a specific zone in a storage yard, he or she would then use the same handheld device to press a prompt, thereby sending a GPS reading as he or she parks the car. The system can thereby identify the longitude and latitude measurement of that vehicle's location.
However, Jones says, even if the individual forgets to complete this process, the tags continue to beacon their unique ID to a reader within approximately a 1,000-foot radius associated with that zone. As such, the system still knows that the car is located within that zone, with or without the GPS reading. Finding that vehicle might take a few minutes, he adds, as opposed to potentially an entire day if the RFID system were not in place.
A reader typically could be stationed at the gate, in order to enable the system to trigger an alert in the event that a tagged vehicle left the yard. Personnel would remove the tag from the rear-view mirror as each car exited the site. The tag would be disassociated from that vehicle in the Vehnet software, and could then be used on another car or truck.
"The automotive industry is quite specialized," Jones says, and some flexibility in solutions is thus required. There is no single technology that will work for every customer, he notes. Bell echoes that point, indicating that RF Code not only feels it must tailor a solution to each end user's needs, but in many cases, a combination of passive and active RFID provides the optimal solution. For that reason, he says, RF Code has teamed with other auto-ID vendors, such as Motorola Solutions, which manufactures handheld and fixed interrogators that work with passive EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tags.
Vehnet and RF Code completed a proof of concept of the solution with an unnamed end user earlier this year, and both companies are currently in discussions with other potential end users. The software can reside on a user's own server, or on a server hosted by Vehnet, and customers typically pay a monthly fee for the service. Usually, the system will reduce labor costs related to workers searching for vehicles, as well as increase efficiency by enabling the shipping of cars or trucks as soon they become available—for example, after they have completed assembly or finishing processes.
"Savings in operation cost between 15 and 25 percent are typically achieved after implementation of Vehnet software [alone]," Jones states.
