Land Rover Optimizes Production with RFID
“We used to spend a considerable amount of time searching our huge facility to locate vehicles. Now, the precise location of all new vehicles is always at our fingertips. The information the WhereNet system provides is critical in optimizing production, supporting lean manufacturing and ensuring that Land Rover delivers the highest-quality vehicles.” This is what Dave O’ Reilly, the Manager for Manufacturing and Purchasing IT of Land Rover, said regarding their adaption on WhereNet’s RFID. With this new technology, the processing of vehicle units going over 150,000 each year is made easier for everyone.
This real-time locating system (RTLS) is placed at their assembly plant located at Solihull. This plant, boasting of 308 acres, houses the production of the Defender, Discovery 3/LR3, Ranger Rover, and Range Rover Sport vehicles. The tracking system’s vast improvement on different things is clear, as it resulted to a quicker pace of production, output, order-t-cash cycles, and the quality of the vehicles manufactured. Aiding in their quality assessment of each vehicle, WhereNet has helped Land Rover tremendously due to better management of the process of quality checking. It is because of this that millions of dollars were saved, since they were able to send out vehicles for delivery in a time that is quicker than usual. This resulted to a notable improvement in their order-to-cash-cycle time.
Tom Bacon, General Manager of Manufacturing and Government Business of Zebra Enterprise Solutions Group (WhereNet Corporation is under the said company), said this regarding their tie up with Land Rover, “Powered by WhereNet’s real-time locating system technology, Land Rover and other OEMs have a ‘bread crumb trail’ of information about every vehicle on site, enabling plant managers to accurately plan, execute and monitor processing within the dynamic off-line environment.”
source: Industy Week