RFID moves supply chain at Hyundai/Kia Motors

Glovis, an affiliated company, is in charge of Hyundai/Kia’s automotive parts supply chain management, and next month will start to receive RFID tagged boxes of automotive parts from more than 200 suppliers. Using RFID and EPC middleware, Glovis believes it will be able to track boxes of automotive parts through the major supply chain processes, including delivery to the distribution centre, repacking, leaving the distribution centre, delivery overseas and final delivery to Hyundai/Kia Motors’ factory in Alabama, USA. The first phase is being supported by the South Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, and involves 130,000 UPM Raflatac UHF RFID tags being applied to parts boxes and packaging cases from five major suppliers for export. In the second phase, 20 million UPM Raflatac RFID tags will be used annually to track all boxes and containers through the supply chain. The project’s scope will then be broadened to include Hyundai/Kia Motors’ Slovakia factory as well as another as yet unnamed “major manufacturing site”. Until now, Glovis has applied bar code labels with shipping marks to the parts boxes, which has made it difficult to automate distribution and acquire real-time distribution information. Additionally, the company says it led to occasional human error during repacking, resulting in cost to Glovis and the manufacturer due to lead times for re-despatch and conflicts in production scheduling at Hyundai/Kia Motors’ production line. In the RFID-enabled SCM, reports for each process are automatically collected by passing the parts boxes through an RFID gate. In repacking, workers can check for errors by comparing data from the RFID tags against order information. Even during delivery, the information system automatically provides delivery status reports for despatch from the distribution centre for export. “Through the RFID implementation, production and co-operation will be improved among all Hyundai/Kia Motors’ affiliated companies,” says Senior Managing Director at Glovis, Mr Jin-Gi Hong. “Hyundai/Kia Motors’ Alabama factory can expect optimal supply to maximize its efficiency.”