RFID-enabled real-time PBS monitoring for automobile assembly factory

Abstract

In automotive industry, painted body storage (PBS) is generally employed as a buffering and re-sequencing site, which has the capabilities of levelling unmatched production capacity and balancing different optimisation objects between paint shop and trim shop. Takt time becomes shorter with the growth of automotive production, and product configurations become more diverse with the increase of customising requirements. However, PBSs in many automotive enterprises are still manual or semi-manual monitored and controlled. Since manual operation is time consuming and error prone, manually operated PBS has become efficient bottleneck of production in automobile factory. In this article, a radio frequency identification (RFID) enabled real-time monitoring system (RRMS) is developed to improve visualisation and controllability of the PBS in a Chinese multi-purpose vehicle manufacturer. RRMS improves the efficiency of operation and makes PBS into a transparent, open and controllable system. Moreover, integrated with manufacturing execution system, RRMS provides a longer deterministic list of about-to-be-trimmed car-bodies for assembly sequencing and material delivering, which doubles the time in advance for production supervisor and material deliverer. As an indispensable part of the practical application research, this article finally discusses some non-technical issues in the system designing and implementation.

Keywords:

• RFID
• PBS
• WIP management
• automobile assembly

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant nos. 50775089, 50825503, and 50875101.