A Case Study of Process Monitoring System for Mold Production with Ubiquitous Technology

A recent advance in RFID technology is one of the major technological drives in reducing cost in logistics, distribution and even in the manufacturing sector. However, currently the technology is practically accepted only in the area of logistics and inventory control. The characteristic of these application areas is that the technology is used in the controllable environment. In this paper, we discuss a case study of using active and passive RFID technologies to automatically gather process information in the mold factory. Active RFID tags are attached on the main parts of molds and their positions in the floor are tracked with the routers. We also discuss on the idea of using mobile device with RFID reader to inquire information for molds on the spot in the factory floor. The inquirable information includes 3D design data and basic mold data. The paper shows implementation results with hardware configuration for the testbed.