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Ford Gives the RFID-Curious A Rare Treat Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox
Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2007 12:00:00 AM |
In a well-attended session at last month's RFID Journal Live conference in Orlando, FL, Mark Wrubel, material planning & logistics launch manager at Ford Motor Co., gave the assembled manufacturers a rare treat: details of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) project that was not mandate-driven and has achieved a solid return on investment.
According to Wrubel, the automaker's overall RFID strategy was to create a standard infrastructure across all of its participating plants, leveraging the same software, tags, and readers in each deployment so that lessons learned would be applicable in all instances.
The applications that Ford addresses through RFID technology include parts replenishment on the production line; automated gates for trucks entering and leaving company sites; inbound yard management to help cut down on delivery bottlenecks; container management; and tracking of vehicles, equipment, and other assets.
Ford's biggest RFID initiative has been its factory-floor parts replenishment, which has been active for five years, according to Wrubel. Of the company's more than 100 manufacturing plants, 99% use RFID in this capacity. When parts are running low on a Ford assembly line, operators push a button that is connected to a materials delivery system, which, in turn, uses RFID with real-time location tracking to identify the whereabouts of the needed parts.
This ilk of RFID installment has been a popular one, according to ARC Advisory Group.
"Asset tracking in its various forms is one of the focal points of this [RFID] activity, due primarily to the contention that knowing the location of an asset, part, or finished good can drive better asset utilization, manufacturing process improvements, and upticks in other manufacturing performance metrics," read a recent report by Chantal Polsonetti of ARC Advisory Group.
Yet, few manufacturers have been willing to do more than play in the shallow end of the RFID pool. Those with the resources to back such efforts, like Ford, have generally tested the waters with closed-loop, or internal, projects.
The automaker's RFID experience, however, also includes in-transit tracking, which demands the cooperation of the transportation providers that supply Ford's factories with parts and materials. RFID tags on trailers arriving at a Ford plant corroborate that the truck is authorized to enter the facility, and open the automated gates. Ford workers can then track the truck's location and the amount of time it spends inside the compound. That visibility, Wrubel told the audience, has facilitated more efficient delivery schedules.
Ford also tracks its own vehicles. Because finished cars and trucks are held for about a month before shipment, an RFID tag hung from the rear-view mirror acts as a tracking device inside the plant, allowing workers to find the right vehicle at the right time.
Wrubel said the RFID project at one plant has already produced $20 million in savings, estimating that the return on investment occurred within nine months' time.
This article originally appeared in the June 2007 issue of Managing Automation.
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