Solutions and ideas for RFID intelligent manufacturing design in automobile production

Demands of the automotive industry

The automotive industry is facing rapid changes. The traditional way of manufacturing automobiles is transforming into a flexible, digital, automated and data-based intelligent manufacturing system. In this context of change, automobile manufacturers are facing challenges in logistics, production, distribution and Asset MANAGEMENT. In order to meet these challenges, RFID intelligent manufacturing design solutions have become one of the solutions.

Logistics solutions

In terms of logistics, a complete set of system solutions has been designed, covering the four major processes of the whole vehicle, powertrain machining and assembly, parts distribution, production line sorting and collection, and commodity vehicles from offline to warehousing and delivery. The goal of this solution is to eliminate intermediate links, improve efficiency and achieve transparent management, and realize changes in transportation and unloading, material warehousing, in-warehouse management, picking and warehousing, and intelligent manufacturing traceability. It has been successfully applied to the whole vehicle, power and spare parts factories of many leading automobile companies.

Application links

1. Intelligent transportation and unloading

Industry characteristics: Automobile manufacturers are faced with a wide variety of parts, a large number of suppliers, laborious communication for goods, large material inventory, congestion of logistics vehicles in the factory area, imbalance in unloading scheduling, and urgent shortage of materials.

Customer pain points: congestion in and out, disorderly use of resources, and alarms for urgent material shortages.

Solution: By applying RFID, vision and other sensing products, combined with logistics vehicle management software and laser navigation unmanned forklifts, logistics vehicle guidance and intelligent unloading management can be achieved. Specific measures include:

(1) Use RFID technology to realize automatic identification and positioning of logistics vehicles to improve unloading efficiency and accuracy.

(2) Use visual perception technology to realize automatic identification and sorting of goods and reduce manual operations.

(3) Use logistics vehicle management software to realize real-time monitoring and scheduling of vehicles and optimize transportation routes and time arrangements.

(4) Introduce laser navigation unmanned forklifts to realize automated cargo handling and stacking, reduce labor costs and improve efficiency.

Project benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, intelligent vehicle guidance, instant allocation of cargo spaces, and real-time monitoring of occupancy status can be achieved, thereby reducing warehouse congestion rate by 70%, improving unloading resource utilization by 100%, reducing the number of personnel by 30%, and reducing abnormal working hours by 90%.

2. Intelligent material warehousing

Industry characteristics: The supply chain management of automobile manufacturing companies is cumbersome and complex. At present, lean, low-manpower and efficient intelligent management has not yet been achieved. There are widespread problems such as confusion between accounts and cards, low warehousing efficiency and a large number of staff.

Customer pain points: confusion between accounts and cards, low warehousing efficiency and a large number of staff.

Solution: By installing RFID intelligent channel doors at the entrance to replace manual code scanning, automatic high-speed batch reading can be achieved. Specific measures include:

(1) Using RFID technology to realize automatic identification and tracking management of materials, improving warehousing efficiency and accuracy.

(2) Automatic high-speed batch reading, with a maximum speed of 11km/h, and can support up to 150 groups of simultaneous identification.

(3) Using unique patented algorithm technology to achieve anti-cross-reading function and increase the reading rate to more than 99.99%.

Project benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, batch goods can be quickly put in and out of the warehouse, saving manpower and improving efficiency; data can be automatically uploaded to WMS for transparent management; batch goods inspection function can prevent mistakes; single door + 4 AGVs can save 3-4 people, and the profit of a single vehicle unit is 10.8 yuan.

3. Intelligent warehouse management

Industry characteristics: With the expansion of the scale and growth of production capacity of automobile manufacturing enterprises, the scale of material supply has increased dramatically, and warehouse management has become the key to reducing costs and improving efficiency. However, traditional warehouse management has problems such as inconsistency between accounts and cards, difficulty in inventory, opaque warehouse information and too many staff.

Customer pain points: inconsistency between accounts and cards, difficulty in inventory, opaque warehouse information and too many staff.

Solution: Through intelligent technology to transform warehouse management, realize automation, transparency and efficiency. Specific measures include:

(1) Ground warehouse: Utilize RFID technology transformation of AGV (automatic guided vehicle) to bind cargo labels with warehouse label information to realize automatic loading and real-time update of warehouse information.

(2) High-level warehouses: RFID transformation of forklifts, combined with intelligent shelves, to achieve the binding of cargo labels and warehouse label information, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of cargo sorting and storage.

Project benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, the automatic loading of goods, real-time updating of warehouse information and transparent management can be achieved, thereby reducing labor costs, improving warehouse management efficiency, and reducing the problems of inconsistency between accounts and cards and inventory difficulties.

4. Intelligent picking and delivery

Industry characteristics: In traditional automobile manufacturing companies, the sorting and delivery of materials mainly rely on manual operations, which are complex and prone to errors. At the same time, a large amount of logistics resources are consumed in the process of material delivery, and the cost of manual management is high and the efficiency is low.

Customer pain points: many different pieces, high quality risks, long employee training time, and low picking efficiency.

Solution: Transform the picking and delivery process through intelligent technology to achieve automation, precision and efficiency. Specific measures include:

Use RFID tags, PTL (Pick-to-Light) shelves and AGV (Automated Guided Vehicles) to connect with the company's WMS (Warehouse Management System) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) to achieve automatic picking and light guidance of storage materials, as well as light guidance of pulling materials.

Project benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, the efficiency of warehousing and line-side picking of materials can be improved, the error rate of picking can be reduced, and labor costs can be reduced. At the same time, JIT (Just-in-Time) timely logistics can be achieved to ensure that necessary products are produced at the necessary time.

5. Intelligent manufacturing traceability

Industry characteristics: In automobile manufacturing companies, existing production lines often need to print and post configuration sheets frequently, but the information display is limited, and the role of information systems such as MES cannot be fully utilized. There is a lag in the acquisition of information such as production, quality, equipment and energy.

Customer pain points: The AVI system is inefficient, and traditional label information has blind spots and is prone to errors.

Solution: Through on-board tags and fixed readers, record information such as process, logistics, quality and equipment parameters in the whole vehicle manufacturing process, and implement the work of driving process equipment. At the same time, this information is uploaded to the system in a timely manner to form an electronic document.

Project benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, the entire manufacturing process can be traced.

(1) Reduce the risk of mis-installation of different parts and ensure that logistics assembly, quality and equipment problems can be fed back and resolved in a timely manner.

(2) Provide real-time data collection, equipment identification, production management and after-sales service, providing unlimited possibilities for the company's subsequent work.

Typical case

Project background: There are some problems in the vehicle factory of a well-known company, including frequent printing and pasting of configuration sheets, limited information presentation, and inability to give full play to the role of information systems such as MES, resulting in lagging information on production, quality, equipment and energy. In this case, it is impossible to meet the flexible customized production needs of multiple varieties and small batches of automobiles. Therefore, the company urgently needs to use intelligent sensing technology to ensure the continuity, transparency and real-time of data information in the automobile manufacturing process to achieve a new level of automation and manufacturing efficiency.

Solution: Provided a set of customized solutions for them, their independently developed RFID products are used in assembly lines, conveyor lines and other production lines. By installing a read/write head on the Library-borrowing-machine-touch-query-intelligent-terminal-all-in-one-machine.html target='_blank'>workstation and installing the tag on the Tooling board/tray, automatic and real-time data collection can be achieved, and automatic docking with the MES system, PLC and testing equipment can be achieved.

Project application: In this project, RFID automatic collection technology was applied in more than 10 workstations. In conjunction with the MES system, functions such as mixed-flow production changeover reminders and real-time guidance of process operations were realized.

Value benefits: Through the application of the above solutions, the entire manufacturing process can be traced. Specific value benefits include:

(1) Eliminated the work of manually pasting configuration sheets and improved production efficiency.

(2) Reduced the risk of misinstallation of different parts, ensuring that logistics assembly, quality and equipment problems can be fed back and resolved in a timely manner.

(3) Provided unlimited possibilities for subsequent data collection, equipment identification and production management.