Hewlett-Packard (HP) Brazil has been improving its use of radio frequency identification technology on assembly lines, thanks to its accumulated learnings since the firm started putting electronic tags on its printers and accessories more than a decade ago. The results of these pioneering practices have been publicly presented within and outside Brazil, along with hardware and software developed in partnership with the FIT – Institute of Technology, in Sorocaba, São Paulo, in order to improve the company’s manufacturing chain.
HP Brazil has now developed a platform—designed by business professionals, scientists and thinkers from around the world—that has its foundations in a concept called Industry 4.0, also dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Known as Exceler8 – Innovating Industry 4.0 (a name that conveys the ideas of “acceleration” and “higher speed,” while focusing on excellence, according to the company), the platform streamlines business operations in the area of supply chain management (SCM) in accordance with GS1‘s EPC RFID standards. With its footprint in Industry 4.0, the solution also follows Internet of Things practices, with data stored in the cloud.
The platform works like this: The factory receives a confirmed order for products, and the manufacturing processes for those ordered goods are then tracked via RFID, as is their delivery status. HP benefits by being able to better monitor production, and by avoiding delays in both production and delivery.
With the platform in place, HP reports, it now has fuller control of manufacturing and delivery times for items and customers, due to its use of passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags, as well as data stored in the cloud, all based on the GS1 EPC standards. This facilitates integration with other links in the chain, such as suppliers and customers.
Throughout the past decade, HP Brazil has been using RFID on its printer assembly line in Sorocaba. After that deployment, the company adopted the technology to help managed the recycling of used electronics—a project that became known as SmartWaste, and that received RFID Journal’s RFID Green Award in 2012 (see Extracting New Value from Old Printers).
More recently, with the maturation of SmartWaste activities, a Brazilian organization called Sinctronics set up an RFID-enabled recycling facility just a few hundred meters away from an HP printer manufacturing plant operated by Flextronics (see Brazilian Recycling Plant Uses RFID to Facilitate Reverse Logistics). This plant also conducts research regarding recycled materials and meets Brazil’s environmental regulations, such as those resulting from the its National Policy on Solid Waste.
According to Kami Saidi, HP’s head of LATAM manufacturing and supply chain operations, investments in technology are an intrinsic part of the company’s strategy. “Some projects developed in Brazil have been extended worldwide,” Saidi says. “RFID technology currently used in Brazil is in studies to be expanded in the international context for management of HP’s production and logistics processes.”
What prompted Hewlett-Packard to use GS1’s standards was the need to control processes from end to end; streamline, automate and manage operations; and optimize operating costs. Thus, HP sought to improve the quality of information; support faster access to that data; provide integration between sales, manufacturing and logistics; and enhance control over all processes.
The Exceler8 project, launched in November 2014, had its first results published last September. At the end of this year, HP expects to expand its use of the platform by using the technology to integrate its manufacturing facilities with its distribution center. Ensuring that data always remains up to date, HP Brazil explains, will enable the company to reach a qualitative breakthrough in customer-management processes and sales management, with efficiency gains that translate into annual savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as a significant increase in overall customer satisfaction.
GS1’s standards, HP says, facilitate collaboration between trading partners, information sharing (order quantities, availability or specific characteristics), agility and item identification. HP and FIT are both members of GS1 Brazil, and were already routinely utilizing GS1’s standards, but other reasons for using those standards included reducing organizational complexity, lowering implementation costs, improving integration and maintenance, and facilitating decision-making regarding the acquisition of hardware, software and equipment. Luiz Fernando Guerra, FIT’s general director, notes that GS1 RFID technology is used in150 countries, including Brazil.
“RFID tags have a very important role in the 4.0 manufacturing processes, due to the various advantages they offer when compared with other sensor technologies,” Guerra states. “The main ones are high reliability, mature technology and high ability to protect against fraud. They also offer opportunities for fast readings accurately, meters away, in order to enable the implementation of advanced automation systems in production lines. ”
Exceler8 – Innovating Industry 4.0, the result of HP Brazil’s more than 10 years’ worth of investment in research and development projects related to RFID technology, uses software conforming to GS1’s Electronic Product Code Information Service (EPCIS) standard, to provide traceability and visibility of all processes, from manufacturing by Flextronics to distribution by logistics partners.
To generate events in the EPCIS repository, HP has deployed product flow control systems along its assembly line in Brazil, using RFID tags applied to desktop, laptop and tablet computers. RFID readers track these products in the assembly and packaging areas, and in the shipping area, where they are placed on pallets, and that information is sent directly to the EPCIS database. The data can then be displayed in real time by dashboards customized according to each area’s profile.
Another advantage, HP reports, is that GS1’s standards are known worldwide and can be applied and used in several countries. In addition, in order to enable interoperability between RFID systems, HP employed GS1’s Low Level Reader Protocol (LLRP) during the project’s development, so that other commercial readers could be used, thereby making the solution independent of specific and unique suppliers, ultimately lowering costs.
HP Brazil actively collaborated with FIT during the development process, regarding the application of RFID technology and studies on the processes of material planning, production and storage, running on Flextronics’ plant in Sorocaba. Although the financial details of the initiative are confidential, HP indicates that the platform is generating many benefits, including improvements in product delivery times. The company also cites innovation among the project’s achievements, as new features were added to HP’s manufacturing process, thereby increasing flexibility in the real-time exchange of information between sales, factory and logistics, due to the use of RFID technology.
As for its next steps, HP Brazil says it plans to expand the Exceler8 platform’s capacity to generate metrics, reports and features, supporting other areas of the company, such as planning, sales and engineering. The Exceler8 platform will continue to take data captured in the manufacturing area to the cloud and make that information accessible not only by the existing web interface, but also via smartphones applications. Thus, any company personnel, especially the sales team, will have the same information available to them in real time, for both PCs and mobile phones.