German bathroom equipment manufacturers use RFID to speed up the assembly line process
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Hansgrohe, a German manufacturer of advanced sanitary equipment, successfully applied UPM Raflatac tag inlays in the company’s RFID assembly line process. Hansgrohe uses RFID Kanban to track the movement of containers between the two production locations, and benefits from it: for example, speeding up product reception, and quickly and error-free preparation of parts and components required for equipment assembly.
Hansgrohe, a German manufacturer of high-end bathroom equipment
Hansgrohe puts parts such as shower and sink taps into containers and transports them from Schiltach to the factory in Offenburg. When the goods leave the factory, kanban cards with RFID inlays and barcodes affixed to them are placed on the casing of the container. The kanban card contains information about each component in the container.
The container is transported to Offenburg, where the equipment is assembled. After the assembly is complete, the employee collects the container kanban and puts the kanban in an RFID reader. The reader recognizes each kanban ID code, collects relevant data and sends it to the back-end system.
The system forwards the collected data to Hansgrohe’s ERP system. The real-time data of used and assembled parts are collected into the same database. In this way, Hansgrohe can clearly understand which and how many parts need to be shipped from Schiltach to the Offenburg production site tomorrow.
After adopting this RFID system, Hansgrohe no longer needs to manually read the bar codes of kanban cards, which saves an average of 1 hour per day for assembly line workers.
Currently, Hansgrohe uses 200-500 kanban cards, “Our inlays provide high read rates and stability in challenging environments,” said Mikko Nikkanen, business development director of UPM Raflatac. So far, Hansgrohe has not seen a damaged RFID tag.
Hansgrohe’s RFID application is the best example of a company adopting an RFID system without changing the operation process. Hansgrohe said the company is also considering the use of RFID technology to further improve the automation and transparency of logistics.
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