Radio-Frequency Identification Based Process Management for Production Line Balancing

The widespread application of offsite facilities has encouraged the construction industry to make use of manufacturing approaches to develop efficient production systems. To fully realize the advantages of offsite construction, management must be able to effectively schedule production activities to increase productivity and improve time efficiency. This necessitates a tool capable of dynamically responding to real-time production data throughout the process. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) has proven to be a useful technology to provide real-time location data for products moving through a production line and is often used as part of a reporting tool; however, the information provided by RFID also allows for proactive scheduling, which facilitates production line balancing. Maintaining a balanced production line in a variability-prone process requires the end-user to possess knowledge of the production line and the schedule and be able to effectively communicate the production requirements to employees on the production floor. Contextual information, obtained from RFID and measured against job information and production time data, can be delivered to production floor supervisors in real-time in order to enable timely and informed decision-making on the plant floor. This paper introduce s a framework for effective production line balancing using data collected by RFID to dynamically update the production schedule and provide more data to help drive better decisions from production floor supervisors.