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Toyota South Africa to Track Vehicles with RFID
Article courtesy of Frontline RFID
Oct. 20, 2005 -- Toyota Motor Corp.'s South African operation, Toyota South Africa Motors Ltd., has selected Alien Technology Corp.'s RFID products as the basis for its automated vehicle identification application. The company wants to accurately and cost-effectively track vehicles from post-production to shipment, to help reduce the time required to invoice dealers on new vehicle shipments.
"Toyota is a quality driven company, in every aspect of our business, and requiring the highest quality and reliability standards from our vendors plays a major role in our global success," said Johan Stoop, Senior Manager, Manufacturing Engineering Services for Toyota South Africa. "We are impressed with the Alien complete industry-standard solution, which provides consistent and reliable reads, as well as the outstanding performance in reading ranges over the many RFID solutions evaluated."
Toyota will apply Alien's Electronic Product Code (EPC) tags on each vehicle during production. The tags will then be read by Alien ALR-9780 readers at ranges exceeding six meters as the vehicle is tracked from within the assembly plant, through the plant exit, and throughout the distribution yard. The tracking will enable Toyota to both streamline and accelerate its vehicle shipping and invoicing processes, and thus its time-to-cash.
"This is one of the world's first such application involving low-cost EPC compliant tags and readers and tremendous opportunities exist for this solution to be leveraged by other automotive and heavy equipment manufacturers," said Andrew Berger, Vice-President International for Alien Technology. "It's well-known that Toyota occupies a best-in-class standing when it comes to production and automation processes. Its decision to implement Alien's EPC-compliant solution demonstrates a commitment to supporting global open RFID protocols."