RFID-Enabled Real-Time Dynamic Operations and Material Flow Control in Lean Manufacturing

Over the past decade, due to its superior characteristics over other data capturing systems, the trend toward implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in real-time production is increasing. However, RFID adoption is still not mature enough to cover today’s production environments’ aspects and needs. This research addresses the significant role of RFID in smart lean manufacturing sustainability and lean digital factories. This paper focuses on expanding the utilization of RFID system beyond tracking to include intelligent real-time control of production operations from the value stream point of view. Therefore a real-time RFID-based dynamic value stream mapping (DVSM) is developed to overcome the limitations of snapshot VSM in order to live monitor the dynamic behavior of production shop-floor (PSF). DVSM is used as a real-time computer-based lean tool that contains different real-time operations control modules, and if-analysis functions to sustain LM practices and to achieve lean aims. An example of the real-time module which runs through DVSM to support LM aims is developed. It is called real-time dispatching priority generator (RT-DPG) module. RT-DPG contains different material flow control rules to live prioritize the material flow in unpredictable dynamic production environments, and thereby real-time jobs dispatching priorities will be more practical and precisely generated to match load-leveling schedule which is based on “Takt-time” and enhance production smoothing to reduce the total cycle time.