Toyota South Africa uses Alien RFID for vehicle ID

Alien Technology Corporation has announced that Toyota Motor Corporation's South African operation, Toyota South Africa Motors (Pty) Ltd., has selected Alien RFID products as the basis for its automated vehicle identification application. The use of Alien's low-cost, EPC-compliant RFID tags and readers will enable the automotive manufacturer to accurately and cost-effectively track vehicles from post-production to shipment, thus helping to 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.’

Traditionally, RFID-based vehicle tracking applications have been hampered by the use of costly microwave systems and proprietary RFID protocols. Toyota's application will benefit from the use of open, global-standard EPC RFID technology that combines consistent reads, even in a heavy metallic environment, with the ability to leverage extremely low-cost RFID tags. In Toyota's implementation, an Alien RFID tag will be applied to each vehicle during production. The tags will then be accurately 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, into, through and out of the Vehicle Distribution Yard. The resulting precision tracking will enable Toyota to both streamline and accelerate its vehicle shipping and invoicing processes, and thus its time-to-cash. According to Stoop, the anticipated savings on interest for the targeted reduction of Stock (vehicles ‘on rubber’) of one day is expected to more than offset the capital expense for this RFID Project.

‘This is one of the world's first such applications 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.’