Feb 27, 2019Aurora Plastics, a thermoplastic compounds company based in Streetsboro, Ohio, has improved its resin-unloading and yard-management efficiency, while also preventing unloading errors, by deploying a radio frequency identification solution. Seth Scott, Aurora Plastics' assistant plant manager, will present a case study on Aurora's RFID project at this year's RFID Journal LIVE! conference and exhibition, to be held on Apr. 2-4 in Arizona's Phoenix Convention Center.
Aurora Plastics develops and manufactures polymer compounds customized for such applications as building and construction, recreation, automotive, wires and cables, hoses and tubes, batteries, and footwear manufacturing. The firm makes a wide variety of products, including rigid and flexible PVC compounds, thermoplastic elastomers, custom thermoplastic olefins, CPE alloys, PVC-acrylic alloys, low-smoke zero-halogenated compounds, flame-retardant concentrates, SBS and SEBS compounds, and PVC and TPE cellular foam compounds.
The company runs five compound manufacturing sites, including its Streetsboro facility and four others in Welcome, N.C.; Lunenburg, Mass.; Pasadena, Texas; and Marieville, Quebec. Output from these plants is sold across the United States and Canada, as well as in export markets. Each year, the firm unloads more than 100 million pounds of PVC resin from railcars at its Streetsboro facility, which is the firm's largest.
The process of unloading resin into the proper silo has the potential for error, however, and a single mistake could be costly. If even a small amount of resin were to be transferred to the wrong silo, all product in that silo—up to 200,000 pounds—would be rendered unusable. Therefore, a great deal of manual effort was historically required to ensure the right product was stored in the proper silo, including cross-referencing a railcar's ID number and the product it should be carrying.
Scott began seeking a solution in 2016, and wound up deploying a passive UHF RFID system. During the case study at LIVE!, he will explain how the system was designed, the benefits that have been achieved and how the company plans to expand the deployment to additional locations. "This is a great opportunity for manufacturers to learn how RFID can be used to reduce errors, cut costs and improve efficiencies," says Mark Roberti, RFID Journal's founder and editor.
LIVE! 2019 will feature a manufacturing track with additional case studies, and the event will also have three other industry-specific tracks: Retail/Apparel, Health Care/Pharmaceuticals and Defense/Aerospace. The conference program will include four how-to conference tracks, as well as six in-depth workshops on Apr. 2, fast-track training presented by RFID4U, the RFID Journal Awards, RFID Professional Institute certification training and the co-located IEEE RFID 2019 event. In addition, the exhibition hall will offer access to more than 200 RFID solution providers from 26 countries.
To learn more about LIVE! 2019, visit the event's website.
