RFID to support your supply chain

Lean manufacturing is directly dependent on a very tightly coupled supply chain both integral and external. Coordinating supply chain and elimination of problems in it is very important for the smooth lean operation. There are number of techniques making this possible. Barcode is one of the very old such systems. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is among the emerging technologies in this era.

Basically RFID functions as a barcode. It has a unique identifier embedded into that. This is read through radio frequencies in different stages of the supply chain to get the exact stage of the product in its supply chain. Since it is using radio frequency to read the information there is no requirement to have a clear visibility of the tag to read. It makes it easier to read the tags. So makes the technology very versatile.

I found below video interesting on this topic.

In the age of computer technology this can be used in Kanban, to monitor the WIP and to identify the areas of bottlenecks. But always obey the basics of lean manufacturing. Technology is the supporter not the driver of lean.