Tuning in the factory

Henry Ford once said of his Model T car: ‘You can get in it any colour, as long as it is black.’ He was speaking at the turn of the 20th century when making a profit meant making products fit the mould. It was an era when customisation was out and standardisation was most definitely in.

Today, things have taken a U-turn. Factory robots and advanced software have made process lines far more flexible. As a result, customers are demanding bespoke products, and manufacturers are racing to find the best way to produce them at a low cost. Now, from aerospace to pharmaceuticals, one technology has emerged that could help do just that.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, has been in use for decades in tasks such as inventory monitoring and the recording of maintenance histories. But as RFID increases in reliability, it could have the potential for much more. For instance, it can store information about each component to tell the rest of the factory what work has already been done, and plan for the work that still needs to be completed.