Driving Volkswagen's Supply Chain with RFID

By Stefan Brill

RFID implemented at the first logistics center in Wolfsburg

Volkswagen is to become the first car manufacturer to implement radio-frequency identification ("RFID") in its standard production processes. The technology will be used in Volkswagen's Wolfsburg, Germany logistics center to manage the flow of materials between its suppliers and the production line. The implementation follows a year-long project conducted in collaboration with IBM, in which Volkswagen tested RFID with its suppliers.

From now on, information on RFID-equipped containers will be recorded at central points along the supply chain - upon goods dispatch from the supplier, goods receipt at Volkswagen, and upon assembly on the assembly line. Returning empty containers to the supplier will also be managed by the same RFID process. By using RFID, Volkswagen hopes to establish an integrated, paperless control process throughout the entire company.

"The pilot project showed that we can reliably integrate RFID technology into our business processes at a low cost," said Klaus Hardy Mühleck, Volkswagen group CIO and vice president of group IT, in an interview with "Packaging Digest". The pilot included 3,000 containers fitted with state-of-the-art RFID tags that could be read reliably when fitted to metal containers.