RFID Automated Manufacturing offers a cost effective means of scaling a business whilst enhancing quality, consistency and efficiency. Automated manufacturing process control can simultaneously de-skill production processes whilst providing full auditability of those same processes.
Automating Manufacturing Processes using RFID
Each manufactured item is made by following a set of steps, which may be time critical for the product, in a specific order. The process will likely differ, in terms of the invidual steps and their duration, between every different product that you manufacture.
As businesses grow the importance of tracking individual batches of product through the various steps involved in their manufacturing process grows. Batch or item level control of production offers the following benefits:
- Auditability. A full record of the time spent in each part of the manufacturing process.
- Scaleability. An automated system can deskill production by guiding operators through the manufacturing process in real time.
- Efficiency. Optimising the speed at which product is mocved through the manufacturing process optimises resource utilisation.
- Consistency. Optimising the time spent in time critical stages of production enhances product consistency and quality.
- Quality. The metrics above are the core for any set of quality certifications for manufacturing.
The above is true for almost any manufacturing process, regardless of industry.
Government Matched Funding
Our RFID automated manufacturing solution may well be eligible for government backed matched funding. This can significantly reduce the cost of implementing what is already a very cost effective solution which offers rapid ROI. Funding is available to eligible companies who work with the Smart Manufacturing Data Hub (SMDH). SMDH have also developed a suite of analytical tools designed to maximise the value of the data generated by this solution.
An RFID automation example
We will illustrate the process of using our Process Management software to use RFID to Automate the manufacturing processes at a bakery. The bakery is Flower and White, who manufacture a range of delicious low calorie snacks based on meringue.
Bakeries use ovens, so require temperature safe RFID tags. These tags are affixed to the wheeled trolleys (Racks) that carry each batch of product around the bakery. Each batch has it’s production journey fully tracked.
If you manufacture product, and are in need of process automation, these same mechanisms will be applicable to your business. We will be only too happy to show you how easily your business processes can be automated, simply Contact Pinesoft.
What Processes does your business use?
Each manufacturing business has a process to manufacture each product. Our software is highly flexible and will allow you to model your own unique processes required to manufacture your unique products.
Our example automated manufacturing business here is Flower and White, and their products are Meringues.
The bakery may create as many processes as they require. Access to create and edit processes is restricted to administrative users.
The RFID Automated Manufacturing Process consists of Steps
Each process consists of a number of Steps.
Each batch of product is automatically driven through the manufacturing process by the time critical steps. Operators are prompted when it is time to move product from one stage to the next.
Each batch of product has its progress through each step persisted for audit, quality and reporting purposes.
An RFID Automated step drives production
Here we show the Baking step for the Meringue Bar Product.
This is time critical, as over or under cooking will affect the product adversely. The start of this step is driven by an RFID reader seeing the tag attached to the rack at the entrance to the Location (or set of locations) which are identified as ‘Ovens’. This happens automatically as the baker wheels the rack into an oven from production.
The ‘Persist location after seconds’ is set to 120 in this example. This allows the baker to wheel the rack past many ovens, and their RFID Antenna, before he finds the correct oven. Once the rack has been in the oven for 2 minutes – it’s location will be persisted.
Each Product may have a number of different Variations associated with it. Variations are used in this example to track different flavours of the same product, but could track any required attribute or set of attributes such as colour or size. If variations exist for a product then the specific variation that is being manufactured is prompted for at the point of manufacture.
RFID Equipment used to automate manufacturing
The Pinesoft RFID automated manufacturing solution uses Zebra RFID receivers and antenna. These Zebra receivers communicate the movements of the RFID tags past the antennas to our servers. Those servers then manage the automation of the manufacturing and persistence of the data.
RFID Antennas
RFID Antennas are fitted to key locations within the manufacturing premises. Typical locations are doorways between different processing areas and outside specialised equipment, such as ovens.
RFID Tags
The trolleys used by the manufacturing business to create product, oven racks in the case of a bakery, are identified with an RFID tag. Rugged tags are used to withstand the rigours of manufacturing. RFID tags can be specified for temperature and chemical resistance based on the manufacturing processes involved.
RFID – A tag is seen by an Antenna
When an RFID tag is within range of an Antenna the receiver will signal that fact. It communicates back to our RFID automation manufacturing process control software the tag and antenna data.
If that Tag, and of course it’s associated trolley (bakery rack in our example), has just been seen by an antenna that puts the trolley into that location. If that location signals the next step in it’s manufacturing process, then the prior step is finished, and the next step is started.
All of the RFID automated manufacturing step data is persisted for each batch of product.
All of that data seen above has been acquired automatically, just by the normal movement of the trolley around the factory. This is the power of RFID automation to control your manufacturing processes.
Now that we have shown the basics of how to model a set of production processes let’s see how this works as an operator on the factory floor.
Automation of Manufacture using RFID
We will now talk you through the process of the RFID Automated Manufacturing for the manufacture of a rack full of baked products, meringues in this case.
Select the Product
The operator chooses ‘Manufacture Product’ from the operational dashboard. In this case we are to make some meringue Bars.
Select the Variations and the Rack
The operator then:
- Chooses which variation is to be manufactured (if applicable to that product)
- Selects the trolley on which it will be manufactured. All those trolleys in the production area and not currently used in production are visible
- Clicks ‘Create’ to start the manufacturing process
This creates a new unique batch of that product, with the variations as chosen, associated with the trolley on which it was built.
Here we can see the freshly created batch of product.
The trolley, and it’s ID (the internal identifier of the RFID tag attached to the trolley) are clearly visible as is its Location (Production), and the antenna that last saw it at that location (Production Oven).
Steps shows all of the steps that have happened to that batch, and how long they took.
Process Steps (a collapsed accordian in the image above) shows the steps associated with that process, ie all the things that should happen to that batch, and how long they should take.
RFID Automated Manufacture – Operational Dashboard
The operational dashboard is visible to all users of the system. It is the primary driver for using RFID to automate manufacturing processes.
Reporting of Live batches by Status
The operational dashboard drives operators to move product through the production process efficiently, whilst simultaneously deskilling the job of manufacturing.
- Problem batches are highlighted in red and are always at the top of the dashboard. Problem batches have overstayed their maximum time in their current process step (and that step has critical timing turned on). They should not be there!
- Action batches are highlighted in yellow and displayed below the problem batches. They are over their minimum time for that process step, yet not over the maximum time. These are prompts for the operators to move them to the next step.
- Batches displayed in green at the bottom are the remaining batches that are in the production environment. The RFID Automated manufacturing production system knows that no action is required of them at this present time.
The most immediate benefits of implementing an RFID automated manufacturing solution comes from the operational dashboard. That dashboard immediately offers to any manufacturing process the following:
- High visibility of the production processes
- Enhanced operational efficiency by minimising resource utilisation
- Increased quality and consistency through better control of the timing of the steps involved in the production processes
- Enhanced scaleability of the business by deskilling any production process
In addition to the active driving of batch process requirements to the operators the dashboard offers the following capabilities.
RFID Reader Status visibility
Operators are given access to the last read state of each aerial attached to each RFID reader. This allows for easy identification of any network, power or other connectivity problems that might affect the operations. Once RFID automated manufacturing is adopted, it’s important to maintain high availability of the hardware.
As each manufacturing business is different both in terms of processes and location layout, the regularity of tag and aerial read events will differ from business to business.
Our RFID automation solution allows the individual manufacturing business to configure the durations that constitute warnings or possibly broken equipment. Here those settings are 1 and 5 minutes respectively between tag reads.
Location Searching
The current contents of any Location Group or specific Location can be searched from the dashboard at any time.
Here we can see that 4 batches are present in Oven 4 – representing 100% occupancy. None of those batches are ready for the next step in their processing at this time.
Investigation of Any Batch
Any batch visible anywhere in the operational dashboard may be investigated in the dashboard. Here we show the Batch details pane. This is populated with the batch being inspected. The RFID automated manufacturing solution has populated a complete audit trail of all of the processing of that batch of product.
RFID Automated Manufacture – Data Persistency
Live and Archived Batches
Operators have visibility over live batches. A live batch is currently in production, and is actively tracked by the RFID antenna and the tag attached to its trolley. Live batches are stored in a fashion designed to be fast and efficient.
Archive Data
Once a batch is finished, which is when it enters the location associated with it’s last step (typically a storage or cleaning location or similar), it is removed from the live data set and placed into the archive data set. Archive data is stored keyed on the manufacturing date, which allows for efficient reporting across large amounts of data.
Once a batch of product is finished the Trolley associated with it is released to be used for the production of more product. The finished batch still knows about it’s trolley, but the trolley is free to be associated with, and to automate the manufacturing of, another batch.
Export Data
All finished data is available to be exported to third party reporting systems. This data export may be configured to be by push or pull, and utilises JSON web API’s. Complex reports and analytics may be generated which can have access to all archive data from the system. The Smart Manufacturing Data Hub, have developed a suite of reporting tools to allow you to analyse and interpret the data generated by this RFID automated manufacturing data acquisition platform.
Management Reporting
The RFID automated manufacturing data generated by this solution is highly valuable. The immediate benefits of implementing this solution are concerned with compliance data and operational efficiencies. The secondary benefits come from analysis of the generated data, and are concerned with resource utilisation, process efficiencies and other potential cost savings.
This data captures in essence the time spent at each step of manufacturing for every batch of product manufactured at each of your sites for all of your manufacturing processes. The resources associated with those processes are also captured and persisted for each part of each process.
Model Your Working Week
In order to make the analysis of data easier, and the output of reports more readable, the solution allows you to model your working week so that resources are only reported on when they are relevant. Your RFID automated manufacturing solution only captures data while you work – why would you want to report on it when it’s not working?
Resource Utilisation Reporting
Whilst it is anticipated that most data analysis will be performed using external tools, resource utilisation reporting is offered directly from our solution.
Resource Utilisation reporting takes a period, a resource and a granularity (no. of minutes between report intervals).
The resource utilisation reporting is charted natively within the app. Only the working week specified by you is reported upon in the charts and output data.
- The chart itself can be printed or saved
- The data points comprising the chart may be exported as csv for external analysis
- The individual batch steps that underlie the data displayed in the chart may also be exported for external analysis
Batch Searching
The Batch data generated by the RFID automated manufacturing solution can be searched at any time, from live or archive data.
Results are filtered to match the selected criteria.
- Any individual batch may be examined directly from the result set in the application
- The entire result set may be exported for external analysis
Batch Finder
Any individual batch may be found and viewed by Batch ID at any time.
RFID Automated Manufacturing – Conclusions
If you are a business owner about to begin the process of automating your existing manual manufacturing processes you may have many drivers for doing so.
- You may be looking to make your business more scaleable
- You may want operational efficiencies
- You may seek to make the business less dependant upon key employees, perhaps yourself
- You may want insights into data you do not currently have from your business
RFID automated manufacturing can help many businesses to achieve all of these benefits, and more, with minimal disruption or expenditure. There may even be matched grant funding available from government bodies to achieve these process enhancements.
To see whether your existing business processes could be automated effectively with our RFID process automation solution, please contact us using the form below