Case Study: Freightliner Controls Inventory "Choke Points" With Motorola RFID

Like many modern manufacturers, Freightliner faces constant pressure to improve the efficiency and accuracy of its resource handling in order to better control manufacturing costs. The Freightliner management team, headed by Plant Automation Project Manager Louis Fleischer, was looking for a way to streamline the tracking of parts movement from inventory to the factory floor in the Portland plant.

The existing process called for parts needed on the production line to be put into inventory totes, placed on mobile tugs (approximately six to seven per tug) and then transferred onto the shop floor. The empty totes were then returned to the warehouse in groups of 10 to 12 per tug for replenishment. The Portland facility uses approximately 750 totes in five different sizes. While the existing system met Freightliner's needs for picking and movement, data collection processes were labor intensive and susceptible to error.

Once the study had defined Freightliner's process requirements, the business case for an RFID solution was easily established and solution development began. Compsee and System Concepts recommended an automated RFID solution utilizing:

• Motorola advanced RFID hardware solutions incorporating the XR400 series of RFID readers and the AN series of industrial antennas at each portal.
• Metal mount RFID tags attached to the tugs. The tags were encoded with the EPC Standards' Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI) format that is intended for assignment to individual objects and is the corporate standard for tote/tug identification.
• A paper RFID 4" x 6" smart label attached to each tote (one on the side and one on the front) to provide as much tag exposure as possible to the scanning portals. The GRAI format was also used for these tags.
• System Concepts' TraxWare® Software Suite. These modular software products were specifically developed for use in RFID applications in Manufacturing and Industrial Control, Asset Tracking and EPC/DoD Compliance opportunities. The software readily integrates with Motorola's RFID hardware.
• Freightliner supplied printers and System Concepts software connected to the SQL database for receipt transactions.