With the rapid development of global economic integration and the increasing openness of the RFID in automotive industry, the domestic automobile manufacturing industry is facing tremendous business pressure. Some of the automobile industry is highly informatized, while others still follow a completely manual way of operating records. Although most enterprises have established their own information system system, but most of them have serious inconsistencies in the degree of informationization. At the same time with the mass production and use of automobiles, the community for the development of the automotive industry requirements will be increasingly high, all companies want to be able to establish a recognition system to enhance their management level to improve efficiency and reduce the error rate. The automotive industry will be a major area where RFID technology will have a great impact.
1.Application in the automotive parts manufacturing process
Automotive parts manufacturing technology is complex, involving a wide range of manufacturing processes, covering a variety of processes, the number of parts up to 8,000 ~ 15,000; only by the manual management of a huge number of parts, components and complex, numerous manufacturing processes, often prone to error and can not be the source of rapid improvement in the operation of the process efficiency and effectiveness. Therefore, people use RFID technology for parts manufacturing and vehicle assembly to provide a variety of effective management programs. Good parts tracking management can improve logistics management and quality management. Nowadays, parts tracking is mainly through two methods:
One is that the tag is attached to the part itself, which is called hard link. Typical example is RFID for tire tracking management, this parts generally have a high value, safety requirements and parts easily confused and other characteristics, the use of RFID can effectively identify and track parts.
Second, the label will be affixed to the parts of the packaging or delivery rack. Can reduce the use of RFID costs, but the need for RFID has been labeled containers and containers in the RFID parts to maintain a link on the database, this method is known as soft links or soft tracking. The principle of these two methods is the same, only the label is placed in a different location, the following tires as an example of specific instructions.
The main production process of manufacturing tires includes: dense refining, rubber parts preparation, tire molding, vulcanization, inspection, testing and other processes, each of which contains a very complex process, and at the same time, due to the characteristics of the long product data, large number of products, in the process of production control, product data management along the manual way of data recording, it is inevitable to make mistakes; in addition, the manual method will be a few million tires per year and related information are accurately and incorrectly entered into the database. Information are accurately and correctly entered into the database may also be wrong, so most of the tire factory has no detailed database for a single tire, which is not conducive to querying the tire information, not in the tire manufacturing and use of the process of scientific management. Therefore, RFID technology is applied to tire production, the production of intelligent tires based on RFID technology.
Staff in the tire molding process embedded RFID tags, embedded position is between the carcass cord fabric layer and sidewall rubber, tire embryo by the vulcanization process, the label is fixed and sealed in the tire, this smart tire from the factory, the use of maintenance and refurbishment during the whole life cycle until the end of life, all such as the production serial number, the date of production, the manufacturer’s code, the automobile manufacturer’s identification code and other important data are All important data such as serial number, date of manufacture, manufacturer’s code, automobile manufacturer’s identification number, etc. are completely stored in the chip of the label.
RFID technology based on intelligent tires from various aspects to improve the tire supply chain operational efficiency and effectiveness:
(1) RFID readers to read the tag information, the staff can quickly count the number of tires without missing anything, to ensure the correctness of the input data;
(2) As each tire has a unique identification code, when the tire early failure can be read through the label to confirm that the tire is the product of the factory, and then can be traced back to the top to the molding, vulcanization, quality control, packaging, warehousing, shipping and so on, in order to determine the key links that lead to the failure of the tire and to find the real reason, and then gradually improve the quality of the product;
In addition, conditional manufacturers can be embedded in the With pressure and temperature sensing function of the special RFID tags, embedded in the tire special tags can be combined with tire pressure (temperature) monitoring system to monitor tire pressure and tire temperature in a timely manner, so that at any time to provide real-time data to the driver. If the tire pressure is too low, the monitoring system will warn the driver not to drive under the dangerous condition of low tire pressure, thus increasing driving safety and improving the difference between smart tires and ordinary tires.
In addition, RFID technology is also widely used in auto parts anti-counterfeiting traceability. Counterfeiting is prevalent in the auto parts industry, and many unscrupulous businessmen even mix real and fake products for sale, which not only damages the reputation of brand owners, but also harms the personal safety of consumers.
2. Application of automobile whole-vehicle assembly links
Automotive vehicle assembly, mainly to realize the car all kinds of production lines in real-time collection of production data, quality monitoring data, etc., transmitted to the materials management, production scheduling, quality assurance and other related departments, to better achieve the supply of raw materials, production scheduling, sales services, quality monitoring and vehicle life-long quality tracking and other functions.
Before the application of RFID technology, the main body information stored in the bar code, the bar code identification method has the advantage of flexible configuration, lower system costs. However, because the body information are stored in the PLC (programmable logic controller) or PMC (production and material control) database, so the rate of network communication, reliability and other requirements are very high, requiring a high-performance PLC, large-capacity database and high speed PMC host.
After the use of RFID systems, electronic tags are generally placed on the sled containing the car body, from start to finish with the workpiece running, forming a mobile data with the car body, become in the entire production process with the database of the “intelligent car body”. According to the process and production management needs, readers/writers can be set up at the entrances and exits of the painting workshop, at the bifurcation of workpiece logistics, and at the entrances of important processes (e.g., paint spraying room, drying room, storage area, etc.). The read/write station is mainly composed of workpiece position detection switch, label read/write device, communication interface module and HMI. The basic process is as follows: after the detection switch detects the car body in place signal, the read/write device starts to automatically read the data stored in the tags installed on the skid and sends the data to the PLC while displaying it on the human-machine interface; it is uploaded through the PLC to the workshop’s production process monitoring system, PMC, for further processing and calculation, thus realizing the tracking of the logistics of the whole workshop’s workpieces and the control of the production process.
The use of RFID technology in the production line does not require all read/write devices to communicate with the main database, so the failure of communication with the main database will not lead to production stop. After passing through the work station, it is also possible to write data to the tag, therefore, RFID is increasingly used in the car body identification system.
ALN-9654 UHF Windshield RFID Tag For Reliable Vehicle Access & Fleet Management
3.Application in whole-vehicle logistics management
RFID intelligent electronic tags written with vehicle information can realize vehicle logistics information management and help solve the problems of vehicle production, inventory management and sales management.
Vehicle identification code (VIN) is the ID card in the circulation of vehicles, this identification number can be written embedded in the car RFID tags to achieve the car electronic digital license plate management. By reading the vehicle intelligent electronic tag storage information, greatly improve the accuracy of the vehicle information and work efficiency, solve the problem in the automobile after-sales service, product tracking, quality traceability and so on.
We can write the order number, frame number, internal car model, certificate of conformity number, certificate of conformity car model, VIN number, engine number, factory date, warranty card number and other important information in the intelligent electronic label of vehicles. It can with the production management system, the whole vehicle quality file management system, the whole vehicle stock management system, the after-sale service “one line passes” and the GPS global positioning system and so on the system mutual support, the data information sharing, realizes in the whole vehicle production, the quality inspection, enters and exits the storehouse, the after-sale service and the maintenance and so on a series of links of the informationization management.
The vehicles intelligent electron label system operation is comparatively simple, only needs by the specialized person to use has the wireless communication device handhold machine, carries on the relevant scan to the vehicles, at the same time will scan the information to send to the vehicles logistics management system database server to be able to complete.
China Windshield Label Factory
4.Application in the whole process of automotive supply chain
RFID technology is breaking through the limitations within the factory to realize the application on the whole process of automotive supply chain, we can establish a system to track the whole process of vehicle supply chain.
The first stage is to monitor vehicles through reusable tags in the assembly plant;
In the second stage, paper RFID tags that can be discarded are used to track parts and complete vehicles, and vehicle tracking and management is achieved in their distribution centers.
In the third phase, RFID technology is used in the retail sector, where RFID tags will be permanently retained on the vehicle and used throughout the lifecycle, and the information on the RFID tags will include customer information, as well as raw production data.
5. Application in automobile electronic marking system
Automotive electronic labeling system is installed on the inside of the front windshield of the vehicle for the storage of automotive identity data of a RFID tag, and in the city road section of the electronic license plate laid on the high-speed read-write equipment for communication, you can read and write the data within the RFID tag, to achieve the active, non-contact, non-parking stalls to complete the identification and monitoring of vehicles.
At the same time with the original traffic information collection and traffic management platform in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Security can meet the “timely monitoring, network control, active alarm, rapid response, science, high efficiency, information sharing,” the request, and to achieve a truly digital, intelligent, refined traffic management; fundamentally eliminated the road traffic management in time and space Fundamentally eliminate the road traffic management in time and space “blind spot”, expanding the monitoring of traffic management time and monitoring the scope of the city traffic management can be fully improved, but also improve the awareness of traffic participants to comply with the law.
In addition, RFID technology is also widely used in RFID intelligent parking management, charge management, intelligent weighing management, RFID car wash management and other application scenarios.