Hansgrohe uses Kanbans with RFID chips

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“Hansgrohe uses RFID-enabled kanban (signal) cards to track the flow of containers between its two production sites. The company now enjoys several benefits, including accelerated goods receipt and the certainty of having all the required components readily available for assembly.”

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The system has been used since 2008, and Hansgrohe provided the following pictures:

The cards look like regular kanbans.

 

The cards are read when placed in the mailbox on the left.

The full mailbox is read at once.

It should be noted that this system does not eliminate the recirculating cards, but simply replace bar codes with RFID chips as a means of integrating the Kanban system with the company’s ERP system, for the advantages of richer and faster data collection. It does not eliminate the manual handling of cards, at least internally to the plant.

The next step would be to eliminate the cards, attach the RFID tags to part bins, install readers on racks, and implement the replenishment logic electronically. But the readers would have to be substantially smaller than those shown in the pictures.