The Challenge
During the last decades the automation industries has been focused on make the cars cheaper and faster with the aim to increase the benefit in the manufacturing processes. One second won or lost in the factory lines of a car maker represents millions of dollars. This is the reason why it is so important to reduce or eliminate the number of times the line is stopped.One of most critic points in a car maker factory is to have the all the cars in the same assembly line. All the cars are made in series, so if there is a problem in one car, all the line will be affected.
The Farsens Solution
Tianjin Feiyue Brother Monitoring & Control., Ltd, with headquarters in the city of Tianjin (China), has developed a solution to monitor the temperature of electric motors in overhead conveyor lines in BMW-Brilliance factory powered by Rocky100 IC.Each lifting hanger in the line is supporting and moving one car under construction, moved by an electric motor, where a UHF RFID battery-free sensor tag with a thermistor has been installed. The system is giving two main advantages to the engineers in the factory:
.Identification of overheating problems of the motor that allows to detect problems in real time.
.Traceability of the hanger to identify where it is along the line, thanks to EPC C1G2 standard compliant of the tag.
Reducing costs of maintenance
By monitoring the temperature of each electric motor, it is easy to identify when an electric motor is starting to have problems before stop the complete line on the factory. The maintenance service will detect in advance all the motors with overheating temperatures and can focus the effort on them saving time and money. If one of the motors is overheated automatically it is removed from the line before have a function failure. Out from the assembly line the car can be changed from the lifting
hanger and be reintroduced into the process withoutwasting time.
Real Time temperature monitoring
Each tag in the assembly line is read by one of the readers distributed along the factory. All the tags are read by thereaders and the temperature data of each tag is saved in a database on the cloud. The software specifically designed for this purpose can send advertisements to inform that the motor has some anomalies. The software can compare the last readings to proceed or recommend what to do in that case.Not only the software running on the computers but even an App for mobile phones is working on the processes. The
App can receive notifications with alarms or reports with the state of all the motors. By using the App it is easy to consult the temperature of each motor in the last checkpoint and have the tracking of the motor along the factory.
Smartization of the assembly line
By installing battery-free contactless sensors on the factory line, it is automatically being smarted and ready
to go into the IoT world. It is a very cheap way to become old assembly lines in factories adapted for the
4.0 industry
