Enabling RFID in clothing production
Under its manual tracking system, Laws explain the raw
materials were sent into the production process, they entered a "black
hole," where they remained invisible until emerging as a finished product. Cut raw materials, to be used to fulfill each order, were grouped to component
bundles, such as sleeves, cuffs and hoods. A hand-written paper ticket with
order information attached to each bundle by a strip of fabric, and were
brought from sewing station to sewing station, were the bundles changed from
components to completed garments. The garments were then sent to a
quality-inspection station. Throughout the tracking process, pertinent information
was written to the tickets accompanying each bundle at each station. Sometimes
the information was incorrect or illegible, causing production delays.
Under the new RFID-enabled system High Frequency Smart Cards
(13.56 MHz) take the place of the paper tickets, and as employees collect the finished
goods, they erase and reuse the attached smart cards. The data collected from
the cards provides a real-time look at how much each Lawsgroup plant produces throughout each shift.
As the garment components are assembled, workers encode the
order information onto the smart cards. They use interrogators located at each workstation
to read the smart cards, and they also scan a smart card assigned to each
worker as an ID badge. The back-end system uses this data :to track how many pieces
are completed, as well as how many pieces of each garment order have reached
each step in the manufacturing process. This kind of real-time information
sharing was not possible with the paper-ticket tracking system.
Conclusion
RFID, in its broadest sense, does
not only refer to next-generation barcodes, but to a compact class of wireless
computing devices. There is a broad spectrum of radio-frequency technologies,
including more highly functional (and expensive) technologies such as
Bluetooth, mobile phones, and WiFi. The future holds applications of RFID that
go far beyond mere bar-coding. A ubiquitously RFID-tagged and networked world
offers a transformational extension of the World Wide Web. It will become not
just a World Wide Web of data, but also a World Wide Web of things. The world
will be very different once readers and RFID tags are everywhere. In an
RFID-enhanced future, the benefits would accrue not just to businesses, but
also to consumers.
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