Toyota eye on RFID Tag
August 13th, 2005 at 05:13pm tiger Category : Car Tech
IBM is playing tag with Toyota cars.
The company is using radio frequency identification transmitters, also known as smart tags, to help the automaker add custom accessories to its vehicles.
The RFID tags could solve a problem for the auto industry: managing increasingly complex requests for options, such as leather seats and fog lamps.
Smart tags send out data about each car as it gets outfitted with equipment. That lets Toyota workers quickly identify each car without having to manually check the vehicle identification number, or VIN. The workers can then add the appropriate options to meet a customers’ specifications.
Toyota is testing the tags at a Toyota facility in Houston. The facility delivers cars to Texas and other nearby states.
“Accessories are becoming a very big business for car manufacturers,” said Deepak Mahbubani, an IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) executive who helps oversee wireless e-business services. “This is a supply chain problem that (IBM) solved for them.”
WhereNet Technology
Big Blue teamed for the project with WhereNet, a privately held maker of wireless technology in Santa Clara, Calif. The system has been phased in at the Houston center since February.
The Toyota program is just one case of RFID tags revolutionizing supply-chain technology, IBM officials say.
The RFID system will soon allow the Houston center to process over 200,000 cars annually, up from a current 190,000. The center now processes 700 to 800 cars daily.
ThePentagon already uses RFID to track military stores. Wal-Mart Stores uses the technology to keep track of inventory.
What Toyota wanted, Mahbubani says, was technology that did a better job of tracking cars through the customization process.
Read More From: Source: Yahoo TechNews
