Car makers to cut costs with RTLS/RFID combo

Ubisense and Alien Technology combined RTLS and RFID in an automotive application to reduce the cost and error rate of mounting critical components in a car as it is assembled.

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 7/11/2008

Ubisense and Alien Technology combined a real-time locator system (RTLS) and radio frequency identification (RFID) in an automotive application to significantly reduce the cost and error rate of mounting critical components in a car as it is assembled.

Alien Technology, providers of RFID UHF products and services, and Ubisense, providers of precise real-time location solutions, completed customer field tests using combined RTLS/RFID for automotive production line component verification. Combined precision RTLS and RFID tags and readers enable automatic component and vehicle identification and location, using advanced UWB and Gen 2 UHF technologies. The savings are said to come from less costly manual rework and shorter cycle times.

At the test site, it is critical to register the exact part numbers of critical components (for example, air bags) as they are installed in each car. To achieve this automatically while minimizing human interaction and the chance of error or omission, Ubisense integrated standard Alien RFID readers into its Location Platform. This allows each assembly station to recognize the car through its industry standard VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) as it reaches the station and independently verifies which component has been added through the RFID integration. The Ubisense system automatically determines which car has entered a station, as the system is able to track and visualize each car along the assembly line to within 15cm.