The Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) assembly facility in Saltillo, Mexico, is employing a radio frequency identification system provided by PINC Solutions to know exactly where within its yard each trailer loaded with specific materials and components is located. By attaching passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags to the trailers, the company can direct yard-truck drivers to the specific location where trailers need to be retrieved and then delivered, thereby saving time that the staff previously spent driving around the yard reading serial numbers, using the radio, and manually writing down trailer ID numbers on paper.
The 1.3-million-square-foot facility includes a 200,000-square-foot logistics center and an 875,000-square-foot plant that produces 30,000 Freightliner Cascadia model Class 8 trucks annually, which are then sold throughout North America. The plant, which opened in 2009, is one of the newest operated by DTNA, a division of Daimler AG. Approximately one year ago, the factory’s new manager asked DTNA’s IT department—based at the company’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon—to help set up a solution that would provide automated trailer management within the yard.
The sheer volume of materials and components moving through the site requires an extensive management system to track the trailers; however, the company reports, the existing solution was manual and labor-intensive. An average of 550 trailers are parked within the yard at any given time, storing materials brought from suppliers waiting to be unloaded, as needed, at one of the plant’s approximately 175 dock doors. About 180 new trailers arrive onsite daily, each with a deadline indicating when it must be returned. If those deadlines are not met, DTNA must begin paying detention fees.
Sometimes, a trailer is only partially unloaded, and is then parked again until additional materials are required. In addition, when a specific material is necessary for assembly, yard managers must locate the trailer within the yard. If it cannot be found, this can result in assembly delays. For that reason, the company often stores about three days’ worth of materials in the trailers, in order to ensure that such delays never occur.
DTNA was tracking the trailers’ locations based on data manually recorded by the yard staff. Workers were typically able to move about three trailers per hour, by seeking a particular trailer based on printed details pertaining to its location, and then delivering it to the appropriate dock door. When the plant manager explained these constraints to the IT department, Roderick Flores, DTNA’s IT project manager, says he and his colleagues “took that message to heart.” The department then began searching for solutions. “We did our due diligence and looked at active RFID, but then chose passive,” he explains, because of the reduced need for an RFID infrastructure or battery-powered tags.
PINC installed its yard-management system, known as Yard Hound, in December 2012, which it took live in March of this year. When, a truck arrives at the gate, the driver provides paperwork about the load being carried, as well as the trucking company, the supplier and the trailer’s ID number. The gatekeeper inputs that information into the system and links it to the ID number on an Omni-ID passive EPC Gen 2 UHF tag, which is attached to the front of the trailer via a magnetic housing. The driver then delivers the trailer to a holding area, passing a Motorola FX9500 fixed reader mounted near the gate, which reads the trailer’s tag ID number and forwards it to PINC’s hosted server, where software links that ID with the trailer’s details.
When an empty trailer leaves the facility, the tag is again interrogated by the fixed reader, and the gatekeeper then removes the tag before the trailer can be removed from the yard.
Each of the facility’s yard trucks, also known as mules, is equipped with an FX9500 reader, as well as RFID antennas, a Panasonic Toughbook Linux-based tablet computer, a GPS unit and a 4G cellular transmitter to send data to PINC’s server.
DTNA transmits a list of tasks to the driver’s computer, including the location of the trailer to be picked up, as well as where it should be deposited. The driver proceeds to that location and backs the truck up to the trailer. An RFID antenna on the back of the mule captures the trailer’s tag ID number and forwards that information to the software, which updates the trailer’s status as being picked up. The software also receives GPS-based location data from the mule, indicating its exact yard location. The driver follows instructions on his or her computer regarding the trailer’s destination, and as he or she drives through the yard, reader antennas installed on both sides of the vehicle capture all tag ID numbers within approximately 30 feet. Those IDs are paired with the GPS data, and are transmitted to the back-end software at a rate of about three reads per second, thereby providing an update as to each parked trailer’s location.
The solution was relatively simple to deploy, Flores reports, adding that PINC was able to install the system without requiring additional servers or Wi-Fi infrastructure. “They asked us six questions,” he says, which included how many trailer spots the facility had and the number of tags to be used.
One early challenge, Flores notes, involved sending data to the server from the yard trucks. The existing cellular service within that part of Mexico could not manage the amount of data coming from the readers. To address that problem, the firm approached Nextel, which deployed a new 4G network.
According to Flores, the system has enabled DTNA to achieve 99 percent accurate trailer location within its yard, and has allowed yard workers to increase productivity. In addition, the company has been able to reduce the number of yard trucks (which it leases) from seven to six. The Yard Hound system also provides real-time data, he says, whereas in the past, it could take a full day for information about the arrival and placement of new trailers to be received by management.
“The immediate goal was just to locate trailers in a more automated way, with no more yelling on radios to find trailers,” he states. That goal, he adds, has been met. Moreover, the Saltillo plant aims to reduce its detention fees by 50 percent from its 2012 levels.
Flores says DTNA will now install the system at its other manufacturing plants, including four within the United States and one more in Mexico. The company also hopes to deploy the technology at some of its parts distribution centers.