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Using Passive RFID in a Heavy
Manufacturing Environment
Jeff KnutsenTechnology Architect
John Deere
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About This Session: A Brief Outline
• About John Deere
• Three Projects:
– WIP Visibility
– MES Integration
– Outbound Logistics Mistake-Proofing
• Lessons Learned
• Questions
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Integrity … Quality … Commitment … Innovation
About John Deere
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2009 Net Sales and Revenues
$23.1 Billion
Agriculture & Turf 78.4%
Construction & Forestry 11.4%
Credit 8.4%
Other 1.8%
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John Deere Manufacturing Locations
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John Deere’s Approach to RFID
• We engage in RFID because we see value
for our shareholders.
• Very different from a CPG:– CPG: High-volume, palletized cases.
Deere: Low volume, big each’s.
– CPG: “90% read rate is better than nothing.”
Deere: 6-sigma organization. Need better than 99%.
– CPG: Mandate-driven.
Deere: SVA-driven.
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John Deere’s Approach to RFID
• Knowing our places:
– The Business Unit vs Corporate.
• The Role of the Business Unit:
– Articulate pain points.
– Manage the tactical execution of the projects.
– Fund the project if the ROI is there (it almost
always is).
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John Deere’s Approach to RFID
• The Role of the Enterprise:
– Earn the right to be invited to the business unit’s
project team.
– Manage the program. Drive the strategy.
– Be involved as possible in project planning.
– “Right-size” the solution: re-use, scale, standards.
– Be uncompromising on data standards.
– Own the key external relationships.
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Three Projects
• WIP Visibility
• MES Integration
• Outbound Logistics Mistake-Proofing
• Each UHF Passive.
• Each at a different factory.
• Deere has many other recent passive RFID
projects as well.
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WIP Visibility
• Opportunity:
– Closed loop container system.
– Painted parts travel across town from Manufacture
to Paint to Assembly via 3PL.
– Kanban line replenishment: barcode scan calls
ERP transaction.
– Bar code scans: ~93% accurate.
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WIP Visibility
• Opportunity:
– Several times a year, a missed barcode scan
causes a part shortage that stops the line.
– Even when the line isn’t stopped, lots of resources
wasted tracking down hot parts.
– These products sell for $100K and up.
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WIP Visibility
• Solution
– Pilot: Pick a subset of parts (78 parts, 300
containers) to “upgrade” from barcode to RFID-
based process.
– Place portal readers where existing barcode scans
occur today.
– Place four tags on each tote/returnable container.
– Improve the ERP transaction to be smarter about
Kanban state.
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WIP Visibility
• Challenges
– Pallets of parts to be painted may contain up to
fifteen totes of varying sizes filled with metal parts
of varying geometries. RF-harsh environment.
– Management wants the roll-out expanded to all
painted parts (700 parts/3,000 containers) faster
than we can deliver it well. They are sold on the
value proposition.
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WIP Visibility
• Results
– Consistently reading 60 out of 60 tags on our
densest pallets – not using mount-on-metal tags…
just protected squiggle’s.
– Read rates:
• Barcode: ~93%.
• RFID: Very near 100%.
– No line down situations directly attributable to
parts in system. Expect none in the future.
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WIP Visibility
• Take-Away’s
– Metal is a design consideration, not a show-
stopper.
– We didn’t just upgrade the Auto-ID technology…
we used the momentum to fix some process
problems too.
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MES Integration
• Opportunity
– New product line.
– A division exec declared it would be tagged – we
needed to find the value to justify the cost.
– We had a technology looking for a business case.
– Started looking at making sure the right product
got onto the right returnable containers and the
right truck.
– Business case was still shaky, tried again...
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MES Integration
• Opportunity
– Building this product would involve 50 bar code
scans - one at each station in the assembly
process - to bring up work instructions on the
MES.
– Each barcode scan takes 10-ish seconds.
– RFID reads are automatic and immediate.
– Business case: take minutes from assembly time
per unit.
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MES Integration
• Solution
– Encode mount-on-metal tag with a GID-96 based
on the product serial number and mount it on
product.
– Place antennae at each station along the line.
– Write middleware to interface to existing MES.
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MES Integration
• Challenges
– Find the optimal tag placement on a product when
it was too late to change design.
– Dial in tight enough interrogation zones to make
sure we are reading only the right product at the
right station.
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MES Integration
• Results
– Line is running in production.
– 50 bar code scans are being eliminated.
• Real labor savings that easily justified the project’s cost.
– Operators want system expanded to other lines.
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MES Integration
• Take-Away’s
– Senior Leadership that believes in the technology
makes things possible.
– These mount-on-metal tags added real cost to our
product, but it was worth it.
– Now that the product and returnable containers
are tagged, what else is possible?
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Outbound Logistics
• Opportunity
– High Volume/Low-cost (300K units, $2K/each) had
a problem where products would make it to the
retailer with repair tag.
– Don’t know how often. Business units are very
tight with error numbers. They won’t tell corporate.
– How often is too often to explain to a reseller that
everything is fine with the product despite the tag
marked “repair”? Often enough to spend about
$85K to fix the problem.
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Outbound Logistics
• Goal:
– Ensure units with repair tags don’t get onto trucks.
• Solution:
– After examining options, chose Passive UHF.
• No middleware or additional servers.
• Portal readers could read other tags in the future.
– Set mask on readers to ignore wrong tags.
– Trigger horn and light when repair tag is detected.
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Outbound Logistics
• Challenges:
– Cost of examining options when we were not sure
any solution would work was tough to swallow for
business unit with a low (for Deere) margin.
– Corporate picked up the tab for that since the
learning would be shared across the enterprise.
• Results:
– Zero repair tags have left factory since going live.
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Outbound Logistics
• Take-Away’s
– For re-usable tags, options like Active RFID and
RTLS solutions can appear to be cheaper.
– Direct cost does not tell the whole story.
– Expected ubiquity of Passive RFID is attractive.
– No back-end data integration. Very simple
application can meet needs.
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John Deere RFID Top Ten List
• Closed loops don’t stay closed.– Leverage EPC Tag Data Standards ferociously
even on what appear to be internal projects.
– Plan that your closed loops will open.
• Build your community. Don’t go it alone.– Establish an internal community of practice.
– Extend your reach through strong partnerships with integrators, consultants, vendors.
– Get involved in EPC and other industry groups.
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John Deere RFID Top Ten List
• Lean Forward.
– The laws of physics will hold true. Get beyond
physics experiments with your proofs of concept.
Be ambitious with your pilots.
• See RFID in context.
– It’s a part of the Auto-ID spectrum… between
barcode and GPS.
– In many cases, it is an incremental improvement,
not a revolution.
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John Deere RFID Top Ten List
• Find a business champion for RFID and other tracking technologies.– Technology evangelists can only take the
message so far.
• Use as many standards as possible. Create as few standards as possible.
• Assume you can solve your problem with passive tags until proven otherwise.– Active RFID is not needed to solve as many
problems as one might initially think.
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John Deere RFID Top Ten List
• Understand your business case and the pain
point you are trying to resolve.
• Learn to tell the story.
– Work hard to find metrics – both before and after.
It helps you tell the story to people with much
larger lunchboxes.
• Bad Process + RFID
= More Expensive Bad Process.
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Questions?
