Recently, the Ministry of Science and Technology released the "Special Plan for Scientific and Technological Innovation in the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Field of the 13th Five-Year Plan" to strengthen the scientific and technological innovation support for "Made in China 2025", promote the industrial structure to move toward the middle and high-end, strengthen manufacturing innovation, and reshape the manufacturing industry. Competitive new advantages to meet the needs of China's economic transformation and upgrading strategy. The "Special Plan" pointed out that during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the advanced manufacturing sector focused on the four major aspects of "system integration, intelligent equipment, manufacturing infrastructure and advanced manufacturing technology innovation demonstration projects", focusing on 13 key directions for key tasks, including Additive manufacturing, laser manufacturing, intelligent robots, advanced manufacturing technology innovation demonstration projects.

This is another strong support of the Chinese government for the reform and development of the manufacturing industry following the "Made in China 2025". Intelligent manufacturing has risen to the national strategic level. With the industrial technology reform, the latest technological means will flood into this field. Then, with the east wind of smart manufacturing, can RFID be scaled up in the industrial manufacturing field?

Industrial manufacturing opportunities for intelligent transformation

The 21st century is an era of "smart economy, smart world" led by green intelligent manufacturing. Since the German federal government proposed the "German Industry 4.0" strategy in 2013, governments and multinational manufacturing giants have taken precautions to accelerate the layout of their own manufacturing transformation. . At present, the fourth industrial revolution dominated by smart manufacturing is sweeping the globe.

Industrial manufacturing, intelligent transformation, intelligent robot

Industrial IoT Application Scenario and System Construction

Wen Yanbing, director of the Department of Economics of Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, said in an interview that smart manufacturing has the characteristics of strategic, high value-added, technology-intensive and leading role, and has many effects on economic growth. The performance is as follows: First, it is directly promoted. Intelligent manufacturing has faster production efficiency, better product quality, greater scale effect, higher product value, and can quickly and directly produce various intermediate products and final products, directly increasing national production. Second, indirect action, intelligent manufacturing often integrates the entire product manufacturing process and industrial chain through information, communication, and industrial technology, and plays an important role in upstream and downstream enterprises and key industries. Third, it has a strong technology spillover.

To achieve intelligent manufacturing, flexible production is the most critical part, which is characterized by the emphasis on customer customization and customization. In theory, it is the connection of raw materials, factories, distribution and customers. The customer only needs to place an order, and the factory will automatically purchase the raw materials according to the customer's individual needs, arrange the production, and then deliver the goods directly to the customer.

Among them, the Internet of Things is an important technical basis for the realization of flexible production of industrial intelligent manufacturing. In intelligent manufacturing, each device is interconnected through the Internet of Things technology, and each enterprise interconnects through the Internet, ultimately achieving information data fusion; process design can be quickly matched, production processes can be flexibly adjusted, and ultimately personalized requirements can be quickly met; Value chain gains value, enterprise benefits are improved, and ultimately customers can get good service; resources can be properly applied, work and life can be balanced, and ultimately provide a scientific basis for decision makers.

The data shows that in 2015, China's smart manufacturing output value is about 1 trillion yuan, and it is expected to exceed 3 trillion yuan in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of about 20%. As Director Wen said, the rapid development of intelligent manufacturing will indirectly drive the prosperity of various industrial technologies. With RFID and the Internet of Things as the advanced technologies for the intelligent transformation of intelligent manufacturing, the market will gradually expand as smart manufacturing continues to advance.

What changes can RFID make to manufacturing?

For the manufacturing industry, the value of RFID is mainly reflected in the manufacturing process, warehousing and transportation. In the inventory management and supply chain management of manufacturing, RFID can help companies reduce the phenomenon of short goods, achieve differentiated production, and obtain logistics information quickly and accurately. At the same time, the entire supply chain can be planned on this basis to reduce costs. The purpose of improving efficiency.

Among them, the most famous one is the Red Collar Wisdom Factory. At the red-collar intelligent production site, each piece of clothing is equipped with an electronic tag. The electronic label contains information such as customer information, product size, color, sewing thread type and color, accessories such as buttons, and special process requirements.

Employees get their own process information by brushing electronic tags, and information such as employee output and production progress is also collected by the electronic tag. In the manual operation and quality inspection, after the employee brushes the electronic label, the electronic display equipped on the machine will display the operation method and quality requirements.

In the finished product sorting area, with the hanging line and RFID system, the electronic label can also realize the automatic matching sorting of the customer's suit jacket and pants. Red-collars from the order to the shipment, the maximum period of time is 7 days, which is significantly less than the current custom cycle time (3 to 6 months), and sales have doubled.

Industrial manufacturing, intelligent transformation, intelligent robot

RFID related applications in the industrial field

The role of RFID in manufacturing is not limited to this. RFID has a wide range of influences in manufacturing, including: information management, manufacturing execution, quality control, standards compliance, tracking and traceability, asset management, storage visualization, and Productivity, etc., are briefly described below:

Manufacturing information management

Combining RFID with existing manufacturing information systems such as MES, ERP, CRM and IDM can create a stronger information chain and deliver accurate data in a timely and accurate manner, increasing productivity and asset utilization. Higher levels of quality control and a variety of online measurements. After the data is usually acquired from the RFID, the middleware is also required to process the data and feed it to the manufacturing information system.

2. Compliance with manufacturing execution, quality control and standards

To support lean manufacturing and 6 Sigma quality control, RFID provides an up-to-date, real-time data stream. Complementing the manufacturing execution system, RFID provides information to ensure the correct use of labor, machines, tools and components for paperless production and reduced downtime. Furthermore, when materials, components and assemblies pass through the production line, they can be controlled, modified or even reorganized in real time to ensure reliability and high quality.

Manufacturing needs to comply with national standards and regulations, and RFID can provide additional information flow to enable manufacturing execution systems to closely comply with and pass standards, including compliance with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 CFR 11.

3. Tracking and traceability

The call for compliance with FDA quality standards is growing, prompting consumer packaged goods, food and beverage companies to accurately track and trace product information throughout their supply chain. In these respects, RFID complements existing manufacturing execution systems, and for most components, manufacturing execution systems have been able to collect product identifiers, time stamps, physical attributes, order numbers, and batches for each process. Information that can be converted to RFID code and transmitted to the supply chain to help manufacturers track and trace historical information about the product.

4. Factory Asset Management

RFID on an asset (device) provides information such as its location, availability status, performance characteristics, storage, and more. Production processes based on this information, maintenance, labor adjustment, etc. help to increase asset value, optimize asset performance and maximize asset utilization. By reducing downtime and performing maintenance more efficiently (planned and unplanned), it is possible to positively influence very important manufacturing performance parameters, such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness.

5. Visualization of warehousing

As Contract Manufacturing becomes more and more important, the clear visibility of the simultaneous supply chain and manufacturing process becomes critical. RFID is suitable for applications of all sizes (local or extended to the entire plant). RFID can be used for all-in-one and full-scale visualization of incoming, WIP, packaging, shipping, and warehousing until the last destination in the supply chain, all of which is related to information management.

RFID challenges in industrial applications

Although RFID products are widely used in the industrial field, the RFID product manager of Turck (Tianjin) Sensor Co., Ltd. only analyzes: “Because of the special environment and needs in the industrial field, RFID products generally require seven basic characteristics: High stability and reliability; high protection level for industrial environment; rich communication interface; flexible I/O expansion capability; easy maintenance; efficient pre-sales technical exchange; timely after-sales technical service.

From this, we can see that the road of RFID application in the industrial field is not smooth, not only requires the quality of RFID products to be excellent, but the original nature of the manufacturing industry will also bring embarrassment to RFID applications. The main challenges of RFID in industrial applications are:

(1) The application environment is bad

In industrial production, there may be a large number of metal mechanical parts, which is a challenge for the use of labels. In addition, high temperature, strong battery, strong corrosiveness, large dust, strong vibration and other factors bring the use of labels. A lot of difficulties, label materials, how labels are fixed, and how the system works must be carefully designed and considered.

(2) Lack of input-output model

The so-called input-output model, that is, how RFID technology can play in the industry, how it works, the composition and rate of total cost of ownership (TCO), and the benefits that come from those aspects and the rate of return. The lack of an industry-recognized input-output model will make industry companies feel that the investment returns of RFID technology are highly uncertain, which means that investment risks are relatively large. From the perspective of business decision makers, based on the theoretical analysis of the calculated return on investment (ROI), coupled with risk costs, often means negative judgments, thus hindering the application of RFID technology.

(3) The degree of informatization of Chinese enterprises is not high

Compared with counterparts in developed countries, the degree of management informationization of Chinese enterprises is relatively low. No matter how amazing the RFID technology is, it is only a means of automatic identification data collection. Only when it is well integrated with the enterprise management information system can it play its due role and create tangible benefits for the enterprise. At present, many enterprises in China do not have the necessary management conditions, such as MES, WMS, SCM, ERP, etc., and the lack of necessary preconditions for adopting RFID technology.

In short, RFID plays an important role in saving labor and improving production efficiency. It is also an important technical support for realizing industrial customization and personalized production in the future. Although there are still some problems, its technical status in the industrial field has been established.