September, 2021

Enabling Fast Group full supply chain visibility with RFID

Established in 1968, Shaanxi Fast Auto Drive Co., Ltd (Fast Group) is the first Chinese auto gear enterprise to exceed 10 billion RMB / 1.5 billion USD in annual sales.

As their business has expanded and their supply chain has become more complex, the requirements for inventory accuracy, speed and transparency have become paramount to their success.

For this reason, Fast Group started back in 2019 to partner with MetTech, an IT consultancy service company and Avery Dennison Smartrac. Through a comprehensive evaluation of different technologies including infrared, visual and barcode identification, RFID proved to be the most suitable factory solution due to its reliability and convenience in wireless data capture.

“It is a great honor for us to assist industry leaders like MetTech and Fast Group in the exploration and implementation of supply chain digital transformation, and contribute to sustainable development in China. As a key solutions enabler across the entire supply chain, Avery Dennison Smartrac is committed to sustainability and products that minimize impact on the environment.” — Lynn Lu, Senior Market Development Manager, Avery Dennison Smartrac.

Fast Group is a gear manufacturing enterprise specializing in metal products for the automotive industry, to which RFID reading speed and precision can be challenging.

Due to the expertise and experience of MetTech and Avery Dennison Smartrac, Fast Group carried out a pilot project, and eventually chose a customized anti-metal RFID hard tag, which is based on Avery Dennison Smartrac’s AD-238u9 inlay. On a given footprint of 70 x 14,5 mm, the RAIN RFID inlay is integrated in a plastic tag by injection molding. The RFID product leverages the capabilities of NXP’s UCODE 8 chip, suitable for a wide variety of RFID tagging applications, including supply chain, inventory and logistics, and more.

The RFID real-time data tracing system is seamlessly integrated with the enterprise’s key operational systems at present, including ERP, WMS, MES and SRM.

Enabling Fast Group full supply chain visibility in story

Additionally, Fast Group is looking for sustainable solutions by replacing disposable packaging with recyclable circulation trays. After the upgrade, a unique ID card carrying various kinds of internal management information will be bound to the recyclable circulation tray of the corresponding part. With the terminal in hand, an inventory can be made and goods can be found immediately.

In the past, goods in process and raw materials greatly relied on manual data capture with pen and paper. The adoption of RFID has resulted in reduced manual labor by 30%, an uplift of inbound and outbound efficiency by 30%, and improved inventory accuracy equally by 30%, in real-time.

Over the past two years since the start of project deployment, it has been verified that each RFID tag can be used over 200 times annually, which is in compliance with Fast Group’s sustainability goals.

The Fast Group RFID hub links up the business systems of intelligent manufacturing to achieve data interconnectivity, which improves the management efficiency and realizes all-dimensional visualization of information.

From this successful RFID implementation, the management of Fast Group saw significant improvements within their processes. At present, Fast Group has joined hands with MetTech and Avery Dennison Smartrac to actively expand the application across all their digital led processes and applications.

“It is a great honor for us to assist industry leaders like MetTech and Fast Group in the exploration and implementation of supply chain digital transformation, and contribute to sustainable development in China. As a key solutions enabler across the entire supply chain, Avery Dennison Smartrac is committed to sustainability and products that minimize impact on the environment. We have set ambitious sustainability goals for 2030. In addition to self-optimization, we help our upstream and downstream ecosystem partners to reduce carbon emission and reduce waste,” said Lynn Lu, Senior Market Development Manager, Avery Dennison Smartrac.

Please watch the video for more information.

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