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Rfid Use Gin Manufacturing Nick Drogo Ist 621 11/16/2010

This document discusses using RFID technology in manufacturing to increase efficiency of data collection compared to current paper-based systems. It outlines advantages of RFID such as automatic identification without line of sight, ability to update tags, and resistance to counterfeiting. The document also notes disadvantages like higher initial costs than barcodes. Case studies show RFID can improve data accuracy on the shop floor by automating data collection and reducing non-value adding activities. Overall RFID offers benefits over barcodes but manufacturers are reluctant due to costs of transitioning systems.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
166 views18 pages

Rfid Use Gin Manufacturing Nick Drogo Ist 621 11/16/2010

This document discusses using RFID technology in manufacturing to increase efficiency of data collection compared to current paper-based systems. It outlines advantages of RFID such as automatic identification without line of sight, ability to update tags, and resistance to counterfeiting. The document also notes disadvantages like higher initial costs than barcodes. Case studies show RFID can improve data accuracy on the shop floor by automating data collection and reducing non-value adding activities. Overall RFID offers benefits over barcodes but manufacturers are reluctant due to costs of transitioning systems.

Uploaded by

Nick Drogo.
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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You are on page 1/ 18

RFID Use gIn Manufacturing

Nick Drogo

IST 621

11/16/2010
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2

Overview:........................................................................................................................................3

Advantages Case Studies:................................................................................................................6

Disadvantages:...............................................................................................................................10

Quantitative & Qualitative Benefits:.............................................................................................11

Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................12

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................14
Introduction:

This literary review will capture findings for the use of Radio Frequency Identification

(RFID) technologies in manufacturing to increase the efficiency of data collection. The review

will compare RFID technologies to current data collection techniques. Manufacturing shop

floors depend on paper based systems which create bottlenecks for capturing and collecting data.

The paper based systems rely on manual entry of data which is time consuming and leads to a

high rate of data inconsistences. Data entry is not a major concern for manufacturing managers

or operators as it is looked at as a non-value adding activity.[CITATION Hua07 \l 1033 ] “Any

activity that doesn't add to the market value or function of the product is a non-value added

activity.”[ CITATION Ill10 \l 1033 ] The collection of data may be looked at as non-value added but

the collection of accurate up to date information is very important to make accurate shop floor

decisions. Radio Frequency Identification systems are becoming popular in manufacturing to

help automate data collection, increase accuracy, reduce the effects of bad data and create a real

time shop-floor experience. [CITATION Hua07 \l 1033 ]


Overview:

“Radio Frequency Identification is the use of radio frequencies to read information on a

small device called a tag.”[ CITATION Rag \l 1033 ] RIFD technology enables the exchange of data

between tags and IT systems. The size of the RFID tags can be as small as 40-60 Microns

represented as a tag or printed electrodes on a paper label. A RFID tag can be passive or active.

Passive tags have no power source and require an external electromagnetic field to initiate a

signal. An active tag has a battery and sends a signal only when a compatible device has been

identified. RFID tags have the ability to store a few bits of date up to several megabytes. A tag

can also be read-only or rewritable. Passive and active RFID tags use started in World War II

when a German pilot discovered that he if maneuvered his plane in a specific manner as he came

back to the base that a radar signal would be changed. This technique was used by the Germans

to identify if the plans heading towards the base were enemy planes. As radio frequency

technology enhanced retailers in the 1960’s started to use passive RFID tags to prevent theft of

products. These early uses of RFID where not as instrumental in the development of the

technology as was the creation of solid state electronics and the use of RFID in the Cold War.

The energy department had a need to track nuclear material and they came up with the idea to

place a tag in trucks and tag readers at the gates of the nuclear facilities. The reader at the gate

would trigger the tag in the truck and information regarding the shipment would then be

recorded. These ideas lead to the use of automatic toll payments on bridges and roads. In the

90’s the use of RFID dramatically increased to be used on cattle tracking, container tracking,

antitheft and on fleets of automobiles to track antitheft, and fueling actions. By 2003 many of

the largest retailers and the U.S Department of Defense mandated RFID must be used by their

suppliers to track goods in the supply chain. [ CITATION Rob10 \l 1033 ] The decreasing cost in
RFID technology, increased data storage abilities has made RFID technology appealing to other

industries. Manufacturing industries are starting jump on the RFID wagon to increase tracking

of Work in Progress (WIP), streamline date entry and shipping processes.[ CITATION Len08 \l 1033

] However, this transition is not moving as fast as the transportation and retail industries adapted

to RFID.

Currently many manufactures rely on barcode technology as their primary automatic

identification technology. Barcode systems require physically orienting labels to have “line of

sight” with a reader.[ CITATION Sta09 \l 1033 ] The line of sight necessity has introduced

limitation in using barcoding. Barcode labels are printed and then placed on products or paper

to be scanned by a human to enter the data into a system. Barcode technology is based on optical

character recognition (OCR) and this technology can be negatively affected by dirt, reflection

and scratches that are present on the label. [ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] RFID tags don’t have these

same issues because they don’t depend on line of sight to read and use radio waves to transmit

data. The use of radio waves allows hundreds of RFID tags to be read instantly all at once while

a barcode could take a few seconds and each barcode. The ability for RFID to continually read

sensors can eliminate the need of human labor to collect data. Table 1 summarizes other key

differences between RFID tabs and bar-code technology.[ CITATION Sta09 \l 1033 ] Table 1:

Differences between RFID and barcode technologies [ CITATION Sta09 \l 1033 ]


Characteristic RFID Bar-Code
Traceability The use of a unique code users Limited to a class of products

data, serial data makes it and not able to track or recall

possible to track, recall the a item

entire life of an item.


Dynamic updating Tags may be written to and Once a barcode is printed it

offer on board memory remains

to retain information. Constant.


Lifespan Tags have no moving parts Bar codes have unlimited shelf

and are embedded in life but

protective material that gives are subject to degradation with

them a long life span, handling


Counterfeiting The use of a unique code Bar codes may easily be

makes them extremely duplicated by simple copying

resistant to counterfeiting. them on a office copier.


Scanning Can be read from inches to Needs Line of sight

feet away stored in items.


Cost 50 cents per tag 1 cent per tag
Reusability Yes No
Application in harsh Yes No

environments

The above comparison shows the major benefits that RFID has over the widely used

barcode technology. However, many manufactures are reluctant to make the change to RFID.

Executives have identified bar-ode technology to have a lower operational performance then
RFID but also having a much lower cost. The cost for RFID not only includes the cost of RFID

tags but the cost of creating the new wireless infrastructure to operate the new technology.

Manufactures already own the scanners and label printers needed for barcodes. Establishing a

Return on Investment (ROI) to kick start a RFID project can be very challenging.

Advantages Case Studies:

The section above gives a brief introduction of RFID and the barcode technologies. The

ideas and beliefs above were a summary of many different articles. In the next section I’m going

to focus on the paper “RFID in Manufacturing: Mapping the Shop Floor to IT-Enabled Business

Processes” by Lenka Ivantysynova. I choose to focus on this article be it was all inclusive

research the shared many of the same beliefs as the other articles.

A common theme in all the articles was how the use of RFID technology would improve

the accuracy of data entry on the shop floor. Operators are hardly motivated to enter data into

systems during the manufacturing process. The data entry operations are looked at as non-

value adding activities. This attitude cause’s inaccurate data to be captured into systems which

leads to bad data and poor shop floor decisions being made. A RFID enabled shop floor will

help solve this problem by collection and synchronizing real time shop floor data automatically

which will improve the data reliability and reduce the effect of bad data. Lenka investigate how

RFID technology can contribute to the optimization of the manufacturing processes by using

automatic identification of items. The motivation to automate data entry on the shop floor is to

remove the non-value data entry steps. The manufacturing systems used to collect data are very

clunky and have multiple input screens with numerous fields. To help overcome these data entry

and time issues barcode technologies are being used to help increase accuracy and speed. Lenka

and others agree that barcode technology was a breakthrough idea to help be more efficient but
RFID distinguishes itself from all other technologies with enhanced features. Many organizations

feel that the current barcode technology does give them enough benefit to slow the investment in

RFID. Lenka addresses the lack of guidelines and adoption of RFID in manufacturing by

capturing monetary and strategic benefits.

The case study automotive industry manufacturer of airbags presented (AIR) in

[ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] illustrates the point how RFID can improve data quality while

decreasing data entry task time. AIR looked to use RFID to reduce the amount of manual

barcode scans by introducing smart shelves that products would be placed on when an operation

was finished. The smart shelf would read a RFID tag, data would then sent to the backend

database system with necessary information.

AIR assembles car airbag modules and airbag covers. Seven operations need to be

completed on each airbag in order to complete the manufacturing process. Each airbag consists

of a cover, a cushion, and an inflator. The creation of the cover is the first step in the process and

a barcode is placed on the cover to allow tracking of the product. The last step is shipment;

airbags are packed into boxes, labeled, and sent to a warehouse. As the airbag travels through the

line the barcode on the cover is scanned. A barcode is scanned before and after each

manufacturing operation. These scans are used as checks to ensure all the operations previous

were completed. The majority of these scans are manual and time consuming averaging about 4

seconds a scan. The implementation of a RFID solution would improve the communication with

the process control system, reduce manual scans and remove barcode quality issues. Using an

active RFID tag, information could be stored on the tags which will reduce the amount of

communications between the databases and speed up the verification queries. RFID would help

eliminate the need to manual scan covers and improve production efficiency by scanning entire
batches of covers. A RFID solution in AIR’s manufacturing process can reduce manual code

scanning process and barcode quality issues. Garcia, Chang, and Val Verde (2006) reported that

barcode reliability is below 80% and missed scans and date entry can cause parts shortage which

could ultimately lead to a shutdown in manufacturing.[ CITATION Hoz09 \l 1033 ] The AIR IT staff

estimated that the use of RFID on the shop floor would reduce the time at each scan station by

four seconds. Four seconds may not seem like a huge decrease in time but if you add up all the

scan stations in all the product lines you are looking at a time savings of 26000 hours of work per

week.[ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] That time savings is 500 hours per week which is translated to

12.5 full time employees at 40 hours per week. The above example shows how the use of RFID

can be quantified to determine ROI and capture and present benefits to top executives that may

be skeptical. The non-tangible benefit of implementing RFID in this case is the elimination of

the manual barcode scanning which would decrease the amount mistakes. More accurate data

and automated date acquisition is going to lead to accurate information and better decisions.

Missed or incorrect information can lead to a shortage of raw materials lead to delivery promises

to customers that can be achieved. The use of RFID can help drastically improve data quality by

ensuring data is readable and automated “RFID technology has continued to improve

significantly over the past few years such that 100% reliability is starting to be reported on the

shop floor”.[ CITATION Hua07 \l 1033 ]

A second case study was performed at the plant of CAS which designs models used in

casting. As models move through the production process employees are required to update the

location of the model in the CAS ERP System. The updating process is time consuming and

leads to 2% of the models location not be tracked. The lack of tracking of the models leads to

employees needing to search for the models which cause delays in production. To overcome
these issues CAS adds buffers into their cycle time. Using a RFID would help overcome its

problems in tracking model parts. RFID would allow Data to be captured, evaluated and

communicated automatically to systems as the models passed through the line eliminating the

searching of lost parts.

RFID technology can be used to ensure accurate and real-time reporting about the

production status. Paper on the manufacturing floor is commonly used to track work in progress

(WIP) through the manufacturing cycle of a product. The paper documents called routers or

travelers follow the product through the line as it is being manufactured and used to capture

information. The routers hold information about how to build the product and are loosely

coupled with the objects they belong to. Many of the routers are separated from the physical

product which leads to resources searching for them. The paper is then used to enter captured

information into the computer system. The use of this paper based system is slow and prone to

data entry errors and doesn’t provide real time visibility. Updates to the tracking systems only

occur after the person enters the data. The majority of this is done in batches at specific times

during the day. To stay competitive in today’s lean fast passed manufacturing environment

manufacturers need to provide real-time visibility for WIP to their employees so they can

immediately react to changes and address any problems that arise. The ability to track in real

time will help manufacturing managers determine bottlenecks and increase performance. A lean

manufacture is focused on getting the right things, to the right place, at the right time, in the right

quantity to achieve perfect workflow while minimizing waste and being flexible and able to

change.[ CITATION Den04 \l 1033 ] Utilizing a RFID solution that tracks progress as it moves

through the process can provide intelligent decision systems that keeps the process flowing.

RFID use eliminates the paper based manual data capturing system by an automatic data
collection system with real time communication. Real time data analysis with RFID can help

determine if a part is still on schedule to be delivered to the customer. If it is in jeopardy of

being late someone will be notified instantly so a decision can be made to help meet the deadline.

Leveraging RFID automation in an organization can make drastic improvement in manufacturing

cycle time, on-time delivery and increase of customer satisfaction by providing real time order

status and delivery dates. The use RFID to leverage automation helps eliminate Non-value

adding data collection activities and adds focus on value added processes.

The ability of RFID to allow manufactures to unify labels on outbound shipments is

another advantage. Customers require different labels to identify products as it goes through the

process. Some customer may require different size labels or different information to be printed

on the labels. This demand causes manufactures to maintain different labels for different

customers and ensure that the correct label is sent to the correct customer. The complexity that

this introduces to the shipping department can cause customers to become unsatisfied and return

products because of unreadable or incorrect labels. In one of [ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] case

study examples, when a wrong label or unreadable label was sent to a customer their production

line would be stopped. The customer would then hold the manufacture responsible to pay the

amount of money lost because of the stoppage. To help reduce the amount of unreadable labels

released the manufacture checks every label and prints them from a central locations. Checking

every label is time consuming which leads to delayed shipments and having central printing

stations, increases the risk of using wrong labels as they are transported to the shipping area.

RFID can help solve these problems by allowing customer specific information to be written on

the same tag as normal customer information. The need for special printers and printer cells

would be eliminated which would allow the standardization of specific RFID readers to create
customer labels. This reader would be used for all labels and have the ability to read and write to

labels. However, for this to be successfully customers would need to implement RFID readers in

their operations. At minimum customers would need to have the ability to read the RFID tags at

receiving and then create custom labels when the product came in the door.

The case studies presented in [ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] outline many of the advantages

that RFID tagging can achieve in manufacturing. RFID tagging can be used to accelerate,

increase quality and efficiency of scan processes, to reduce paper-based data management, to

automate asset tracking and to help create unified labels. The case studies showed that the

motivation to implement RFID was to improve the operations of the organization and not to

better exchange data between customers. The use of RFID in manufacturing has great potential

to achieve a lean more efficient environment. However, RFID does bring many challenges that

need to be addressed before committing.

Disadvantages:

The use of RFID technology on the manufacturing floor to replace or compliment

current barcode systems is very attractive. However, many organizations are finding it difficult

to define a return on investment and true hard savings with a RFID implementation. Top

executives in the manufacturing industry feel the move to RFID technology is a risk. The major

concern is that a barcoding system performance is only slightly lower than that of a RFID system

and a barcode is a much lower cost than a RFID tag.[CITATION Hoz09 \l 1033 ] The

implementation of a RFID tag system needs to be integrated into the current IT infrastructure

creating the need to develop a solution from scratch which will increase complexity and be

costly. The vast majority of RFID use has been done in retail and warehouse environments with

little experience on the shop floor. The newly created applications will need to support multiple
types of data acquisition’s and need to interface many different database systems and file

systems to ensure data is captured correctly and distributed to the people and systems that use it.

A wireless communication infrastructure needs to be present to get the full advantages from

RFID. Wireless technology introduces another set of concerns that need to be addressed security

problems; bandwidth changes and energy issues of battery-powered devices are just some of

them. A tight integration with existing ERP systems is essential to derive the benefits the RFID

can provide.[ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ]

Quantitative & Qualitative Benefits:

To better illustrate the tangible benefits of RFID on the shop floor [ CITATION Len08 \l

1033 ] presented formulas and total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis based on fixed costs,

variable costs, and benefits. The fixed cost will be the cost of the RFID infrastructure, the cost

of software and the cost of maintenance. Variable cost will be cost of reusable RFID tag, cost of

applying and removing tags and number of items per hour that are labeled. The benefits that can

be derived from accelerating scan process can be quantified by the product of the expected

lifetime T, the number of tags scanned per hour Q, the time saved by RFID (U −W), and the

relevant labor costs P. Benefit of AcceleratingScanP rocesses = T × Q × (U −W) × P is saying

the faster products can be scanned with RFID it will reduce the amount of labor that is needed.

Many similar examples of these can be found in [ CITATION Len08 \l 1033 ] however the non-

quantifiable benefits of RFID show major reasons to implement. RFID solutions in a

manufacturing environment show improvement on production planning (PP), process

optimization (PO), and IT management (IT). A RFID solution provides control of assets and

raw materials which can help to reduce planning time increase the scalability on robustness of

current production systems and allow the capture of more detailed data. The detailed sata
captured helps enable improved data analysis. Along with the above operational benefits RFID

can provide major strategically benefits to an organization. The use of RFID can improve

customer satisfaction by providing real time WIP tracking that can be shared with customers to

give them the ability to track progress andto monitor the process of their product through the

entire cycle. Using RFID can reduce the complexity of customer specific labels by allowing one

reader and one location for labels to be printed. This consolidation can lead to less customer

label errors which lead to happy customers. The use of RFID in growing more rapidly in

organizations and could be mandated from you customers. The ability to meet customer

requirements quickly and accurately is important to grow or keeping business opportunities. The

ability to use RFID in an organization as well as be ready for future requirements shows

customers strategic innovation.

Conclusion:

A RFID solution helps automate and capture information on the shop floor quicker and

more accurately. The accuracy and automation helps the manufacturing organization increase

yields, lower cycle time and increase on time deliver by being able to present real time accurate

date to the decision makers. Manufactories are relying more on computer based systems to

capture data and drive process. RFID can support and enhance lean initiatives by reducing the

operator’s time spent entering data and increase data reliability by automating the process. Lean

manufacturing is the strategy that focuses on eliminating waste in the manufacturing process.

These wastes could include the need to walk to a computer to enter data or walking to get the

next part in the manufacturing process. These tasks can be consider waste because they don’t

help achieve the goal of a manufacturer to produce the highest quality products in the shortest

time possible with the least amount of resource at the lowest possible cost.[ CITATION Den04 \l
1033 ] The use of barcode technology or manual entry of data into information based systems

introduces waste into the manufacturing process which then increased lead times, cost and

necessary resources. However, the data being captured on the shop floor is important to the life

cycle of a product and the ability to make key decisions. Setup time and time to complete a

specific process are two metrics that important to track. These two metrics can help management

analyze lead time, determine cost and help increase manufacturing capacity on the shop floor.

As a manufactured item goes through the manufacturing process before it is fully completed it is

considered work in progress. Tracking these WIP inventories throughout the entire

manufacturing process is very important and the data collected can help to determine shop floor

bottlenecks and improve on these bottlenecks. Being able to track your WIP inventory in real-

time can be very important in identifying if items will be delivered to customer on time or are on

schedule to be late. On time delivery is another key metric used in manufacturing to evaluate

performance. However, since the data entry process that captures these key metrics is deemed as

non-value added motivation is not high on these tasks as a value added task. The automation of

date collection is becoming necessary as the amount of data being collected increases.

Technology keeps advancing making it easier and cheaper store data however the speed and

methods that are used to capture this data need to continue to evolve to ensure time is not wasted

and accurate data is collected. RFID can enable factory automation and increase performance of

date capture over bar code technology. The higher cost of RFID makes it very important that an

implementation is well thought out to benefit from it features of better traceability of WIP and

inventory management. However, despite the numerous benefits that can be derived from RFID

there is a lack of use in manufacturing. The lack of adoption of RFID model can be contributed

to small amount of models for evaluating costs and benefits of an RFID rollout. The hardware
and integration cost for a successfully RFID solution are costly and require many resources. The

lack of models makes it difficult for top level executives to invest they feel that it is too high of a

risk and the current barcode technicality is sufficient. However, as shown in [ CITATION Len08 \l

1033 ] the ability of RFID to create both tangible and quantitative an enhancement does exit and

can return at TCO that is beneficial to an organization. Becoming an early adopter will allow a

organization to take full advantages of a RFID solution in their process to help increase

customers satisfaction, tracking of WIP and a more efficient process. This early adaption will

allow them to be the first to meet customer specific RFID requirements which gives them a

competitive advantage.
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