Motor manufacturing depends on having the right parts in the right place, just in time. For one link in the Mini manufacturing chain, BMW uses 22,000 specialised pallets, known as stillages, to transport parts from its Swindon plant to Oxford. With an asset value of over £100m for the stillages alone, plus the costs of mislaid stillages or parts arriving late, BMW needed RFID stillage tracking to keep control of them.
CoreRFID implemented a stillage RFID tracking solution for BMW Mini, based on UHF electronic tags fitted to each stillage. The tags are detected by reader gateways as stillages enter or leave the factory, or as they’re moved around the plant by forklift truck. Tag readers are also fitted at the robotised manufacturing stations where parts are taken from stillages for use in assembly.
RFID stillage tracking gives BMW an instant picture
With RFID stillage tracking in place, BMW has an instant picture of where every stillage is. That saves the cost of manual checks and, more importantly, cuts the risk of production losses caused by parts being in the wrong place.
RFID stillage tracking also helps link individual stillages to manufacturing incidents. A damaged stillage might cause a robot to fail during assembly, or a robot fault might damage a stillage. Because the system knows which stillage was involved, BMW can pull the faulty one out of service and repair it before it causes the same problem elsewhere on the line.
Expanding the RFID system for better tracking
One year on, CoreRFID equipped their manufacturing and logistics operations with a network of 26 fixed-point RFID readers, RFID equipped handhelds and UHF RFID tags. The equipment will be used to allow BMW Mini to control a wider range of stillages, handling different parts.
The new readers are suited to a wide range of applications across manufacturing and distribution. This latest generation of fixed-point RFID readers allow users to construct an array of readers that allow assets to be pin-pointed within a larger area such as a warehouse, distribution centre or assembly floor. The same technology has direction sensing capability that allows the array of readers to determine movement of tags (and, so, tagged assets) within the monitored area.
The benefits:
- An instant, accurate picture of stillage location across the site
- Reduced cost from manual stillage checks
- Lower risk of production delays caused by parts in the wrong place
- Faulty stillages identified and pulled from service before they cause repeat problems