Rodenstock: Omron ile proses verimliliğine odaklanma

Gözlük camı üreticisi Rodenstock, gözlük camlarının kaplanması işlemini, RFID etiketler ve birlikte kullanılan Omron okuyucuları ile optimize etmiştir. Avantajları: daha az hata, insan müdahalesi ve gözlük camlarının proses durumu ile sürekli bilgi. Büyük bir geri kazanım sağlayan mütevazi bir yatırım – takip edilmeyi hakeden bir çizgi.

Reliability Rodenstock Nederland is a leading supplier of spectacle lenses and frames. The Groningen based company is part of the international Rodenstock Group, which, with a turnover in excess of a thousand million guilders and 6,000 employees, is one of the largest lens suppliers in the world. The Dutch division has a leading-edge production unit for the manufacture of spectacle lenses. Thanks to a highly effective investment programme and an in-house R&D department it is the most advanced and innovative production unit in the Rodenstock Group where production is highly automated - technically, mechanically and logistically.

All lenses look alike, so it is important to make sure that the different pairs of lenses remain recognisable to man and machine during the production process. "We were looking for a way of increasing the reliability of product identification by the logistical process," relates Harold Hollander, the engineer responsible for the automation of Rodenstock production. "Up to that point we had been using bar-code stickers, but they were not reliable in all stages of the coating preparation. The stickers would come loose or get damaged and become unreadable, particularly in the cleaning line. The idea of a solution based on RFID tags came up incidentally, when an Omron representative showed them to us. We had never thought of it ourselves, but on further reflection it looked promising. The tags are resistant to high temperatures and to the chemical solutions used in the cleaning process. To begin with we just put tags on the racks for the specials as an experiment."

"At the moment the tags are only programmed once," explains Pier Nijenhuis, system designer at Rodenstock. "Shortly we are going to write to the tags at each stage in the process, so that we can have current status information throughout production. The bar-code stickers will disappear completely. Also, we can still continue to read the tags during production using a simple hand scanner, and print out an order form at the end of the process." It is really easy to integrate the system into the other IT systems that Rodenstock uses, and even communication with the corresponding PLCs is simple, according to Nijenhuis. "At the moment we use Visual Basic, but you can also use other programming languages, thanks to the ASCII interface. Omron delivered a total package based on open standards. Tags, PLCs, readers and software integrate seamlessly so there have been no problems with implementation. The risk of logistical errors during production will soon be negligible. It is all much more efficient and simple."