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Vaillant Group, a German heating technology manufacturer, is using RFID technology to track the production process of residential boilers at its Belper plant in Derbyshire, UK. The company reported that the system, provided by CoreRFID, has been installed on four assembly lines in one of the factories and has proven that in the year after installation, production errors have been reduced by six times, improving assembly quality and assembly. The efficiency of the process. Richard Sainsbury, the factory’s industrial engineering manager, said that the technology will also be installed on assembly lines in other factories in the future.
The Belper plant produces more than 400,000 heating devices each year, which are sold in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The monthly output varies according to different seasonal needs.
The Vaillant Group company leads the industry with high efficiency and high productivity, including the Belper plant. In order to strive to achieve higher efficiency, the company wanted to find a system that could guide the staff in the production steps of each piece of equipment, and create a work record that could stop the system to make adjustments when errors occurred.
Vaillant Group installed ThingMagic’s RFID reader at each workstation
The production process starts with the assembly of the boiler chassis on the trolley and goes through 15 different stages until the boiler is fully assembled. One employee is responsible for each boiler. The system monitors the work process to ensure that each step is completed correctly, and then proceeds to the next step as soon as possible. At any time, there are 6 to 12 carts on each production line.
The focus of Vaillant Group is to improve the efficiency of carts moving between workstations by instructing employees where the product should go after completing a step. Different boilers usually require different assembly processes. Workers at each assembly site must control the time when the task is completed and when to send an assembled boiler to the next workstation for further assembly. Sometimes mistakes are prone to mistakes due to the negligence of employees.
Sainsbury said: “Our first task is to control the process.” If there is an error (RFID radio frequency bulletin: for example, some assembly steps are skipped), it can only be discovered at the end of assembly and during product inspection. To correct this error, you need to bring the device back to the workstation where you skipped the step to make the necessary corrections, but this is very time-consuming.
Using the RFID system (installed in February 2010), Vaillant Group was able to reduce errors and eliminate the responsibility of assembly line workers.
The company uses an RFID-enabled automation system to track the completion time of each task, and start the next workstation when the tasks of the previous workstation are completed. The electronic tool that provides feedback to the company’s back-end management system is used in conjunction with an RFID reader, so only the correct boiler can activate the latter workstation. In addition, this system can also detect errors and ensure that the boiler will not be returned for assembly by indicating the error to the operator of the workstation during the process.
Using the RFID system, the company attaches battery-assisted passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) EPC Gen2 tags provided by Power-ID to two opposite legs of each cart (20 carts in total). Vaillant Group needs the system to quickly read the tags and send the data to the assembly management system (AMS). Only when the ID number of the cart indicates the correct boiler chassis reaches the workstation, the system will allow the tool to start. Battery-assisted tags provide fast response time of the reader. Sainsbury explained that the company has tested passive, active and battery-assisted systems and selected battery-assisted solutions because they are the most accurate. He said: “We found that passive tags cannot provide a high reading rate in a highly metallic environment, while active tags will get nearby interference readings when the cart passes through other parts of the assembly line.”
RFID tag is attached to the cart
All boilers can be adjusted automatically by reading the RFID tags and comparing the parts being assembled. When a boiler chassis is placed on a cart, the ID number programmed into the RFID tag of the cart is read and forwarded to the AMS database, where the tag ID number is connected to the serial number of the boiler chassis. The label of the cart is linked to the serial number of the chassis, making the assembly process sustainable. In addition to the serial number, the AMS database also contains other information, such as the barcode ID number of the assembly staff and the parts installed on the boiler.
When the employee transports the cart from one workstation to the next in the shape of a U, it follows the line marked on the floor. The AMS software tracks the completion of each workstation task by acquiring the information, sequence, screw count, torque and angle measurement used by the electronic tools in the workstation. When a task is completed at a workstation, the data is stored on the AMS system, and then after the RFID tag of the boiler chassis cart is read, the software instructs the tools of the next workstation to start.
The factory has two workstations for most of the 15 stages in the production process. Each workstation is equipped with a ThingMagic Astra RFID reader, and finally about 28 readers are installed, some readers are only 8 feet away from each other. After the work of one workstation is completed, the software will trigger the next workstation to find the label. The video monitor then instructs the assembly staff to push the cart to the next workstation. Since the reader will look for the ID number of the RFID tag only when the AMS software is triggered, the company can reduce the risk of false reading (reading of tags in adjacent areas).
In addition, this system stores information about the time at which each piece of equipment arrives at each workstation, thereby providing more details about the bottleneck, as well as the location of any boiler and the corresponding operator in the assembly process.
Sainsbury said that now, the RFID system has been installed in the Belper plant, and the company plans to expand the application of the RFID system in the Belper plant and introduce similar systems to other plants in Europe.
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