IT managers from Ford's US and European manufacturing
businesses met last week to co-ordinate their RFID
projects.
The meeting was set up to enable Ford America, Ford Europe,
Jaguar and Land Rover to benefit fully from the lessons learned in
RFID trials in different countries.
Ford America's group practice manager for information
technology, David Decker, said, "We are trying to co-ordinate our
RFID trials better. We want to learn what has worked and what has
not worked."
Decker identified an RFID project at its German assembly plant
in Cologne as an example of a deployment that other parts of the
company should know about.
"At Cologne, they have tags on all the vehicles and physical
gates at the end of the assembly line. The gate will not open until
the tags all check out," said Decker.
Last week's meeting highlighted the fact that RFID suppliers
have been selling directly to different parts of the company,
rather than through a global sourcing arrangement.
Ovum senior analyst Alys Woodward said the picture of disparate
RFID trials at Ford was common among multinationals that are
experimenting with the technology.
"I would say Ford is the first to co-ordinate all of its RFID
projects around the world," she said.
The motor manufacturer mostly uses passive tags with short read
distances because the temperatures and dirt in its factories
prevent more advanced, active tags from working.
Ford uses RFID to streamline US truck
production
Ford is working with TNT Logistics to use RFID technology to
streamline the production of the motor manufacturer's T150 truck in
the US.
TNT is supporting real-time production at the facility using
RFID, location-based sensors and a wireless network.
The system picks up the position of racks of components, such as
engines and fuel tanks, as they are moved from the TNT depot to one
of four drop-off points on the production line. The plant is sent
an electronic message, giving it advance notice that parts are en
route.
Data transmitted by RFID tokens once every four minutes is
passed over the wireless network to a Tibco software message
backbone, which converts the data into XML.
Using XML management tools provided by Tibco, TNT is able to
analyse trends and automate workflow by linking into its Manhattan
Associates warehouse management system. The tagging allows TNT to
provide a lot of raw data.
Terry McIntyre, who led the Ford project at TNT, said, "The
system can look for bottlenecks to find out how more parts can move
through the building. For instance, I can tell Ford I have an
excess of parts in my facility that has not been moved in 30 days."
Ford can then redeploy the parts at another site to save money.