Omni-ID ended up selecting its Max tags, printed with Impinj R420 readers, all linked together with Laird Technologies 4x4 antennas. Readers were installed in the ceiling, with antennas located closer to where the forklifts would be shuttling racks. With the ProVIEW tag in place, drivers can get an immediate read of what load they’re working with. If they take it to the wrong location, the system immediately sends an alert to the driver. With that immediate visual cue, which doesn’t require supervisor intervention, the employee can immediately fix the problem.

Nabrotzky says, “If the quality department finds a problem and wants to put it on quarantine and quality hold, they press one button, and instead of 12 people running around with red paper tickets, everything gets quarantined immediately. The visual screen the forklift driver would see when he goes to pick up the rack gets a big line in the middle and a message that says, ‘Quality hold. Take over to QA for inspection.’”

St. Louis says the company has achieved an ROI on the system based the cost of printing paper tags alone. For any company still using paper-based asset tracking, a short ROI is well within their means. And because Whirlpool also opted to skip the printed barcode solution, Whirlpool is able to re-use tags ad infinitum by simply re-writing the data onboard and displaying new information on the ProVIEW readers.

In addition, St. Louis says that one of the biggest assets, while not exactly tied to a financial return, is the improved ability to audit when necessary, and the decreased need to audit altogether. Before, they would audit part counts on a near-constant basis, as management has long wanted a live, accurate count of everything in the paint line. Now, that count is updated automatically as the RFID tags on racks are read during movement through the line — all without human intervention.

St. Louis adds: “The ProVIEW system allows us to view accurate, real-time WIP inventory — allowing for leaner management of assembly and delivery operations. We always know where our parts and containers are without having to send someone out to look for them!”

If something goes wrong, the company is also in a better position to understand where and why. Nabrotzky says that in many cases outside of Whirlpool, he’s seen companies lose a rack of parts, or put it in the wrong place. Trying to find the “odd man out” can be difficult when racks might be stacked up to the ceiling. But the ProVIEW tags can be easily revered in color — white on black rather than the standard black on white — or flashed, so that they can be picked out of the others.

Clearly, RFID has worked out for Whirlpool, despite many of the concerns that St. Louis, and many others in manufacturing, have of its efficacy. St. Louis says the company is looking at more ways RFID could be used around the plant, and the company, and he’s offering other plants insights into the “best practices” of this particular roll-out.

Nabrotzky himself is very bullish on the technology’s future in manufacturing. He says, “RFID has been performing better than it ever has. We have better read ranges, and we can handle harsher environments than ever before. From a higher level, industry is working on lot of anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft work. Tamper-proof or tamper-evident equipment.”

Tags are getting smaller and smaller every year, which means they can go on more objects and parts, or even embedded inside them, safe from industrial harm. Nabrotzky says they’re showing up in the military, where durability is critical. With the “internet of things” percolating its way into many manufacturing spaces, both Nabrotzky and St. Louis seem confident that manufacturers will find more innovative ways to make use of their inherent benefits, while the makers of tags, receivers and antennas will continue to push their ranges and durability to new limits.