Schneider Electric is a global leader in energy management, operating in more than 100 countries. RES had the opportunity to bring RFID to the assembly line at the company’s Peru, Indiana facility, where electrical panel boards are manufactured. The goal was real-time visibility into a line that, before RFID, offered almost none. The result was end-to-end RFID assembly line tracking.

The challenge

  • There was no way to track individual items down the assembly line, so progress couldn’t be monitored in real time.
  • Manual barcode scans at divert points and workstations slowed the line and invited human error.
  • No employee data was captured at the cells, so there was no record of who worked on which products, when, or for how long.

How the RFID assembly line tracking system works

RES integrated RFID into Schneider Electric’s existing line, starting at the work-order print station. When a work order prints, a barcoded label and a unique RFID tag are automatically assigned to the product and printed onto its paperwork, with the product-to-RFID relationship committed to the database. That paperwork travels with the product to the end of the line, built on RES’s AIMS platform.

RFID readers and antennas at divert points read each item as it approaches, communicate with Schneider Electric’s existing controllers, and trigger the correct divert automatically. Readers at install stations capture time stamps as products enter and leave each station — recording in/out times and total dwell time per cell — and pull up the right install instructions on a station screen. A running log of each product’s journey is built in the database and archived when the item leaves the line. RFID-enabled employee badges add another layer, capturing which employees man which stations and what they work on.

The results

  • Real-time data collection enables product tracking down the line and creates an audit trail for every item.
  • Automated diverts eliminate manual scans at the stations, saving time and reducing errors.
  • Employee data captured at the workstations provides real-time productivity insight.

The takeaway

On a manufacturing line, visibility is control: knowing where every item is, how long each step takes, and who did the work. RES gave Schneider Electric that visibility automatically, without slowing the line down. That’s the foundation of RES’s RFID asset tracking for manufacturing. To see what it could do on your line, talk to an RES RFID engineer.