Automotive recalls are brutal. Not just financially - though the costs are staggering, a single recall event can be tens of millions of dollars with all things factored in: parts replacement, logistics, labour, regulatory penalties, damage to the brand name. The actual challenge is the tracing of the component through a labyrinth of suppliers, multiple production lines, storage centers and manufacturing stages through unorganised logs and manual recordings, which resembles a managed mayhem.
And this occurs much more frequently than the sector will admit.
At its heart, the issue is the absence of infrastructure to track items. Many automobile makers and tier-1 suppliers continue to depend on several spreadsheets, barcode readings manually captured in certain locations, and records logged manually in ERP throughout every phase. Once a quality issue appears, the search for its root cause ends rather rapidly.
_In which lot was the specific part delivered?
From which supplier did it come?
What assembly line processed the part and when?
In which vehicles did the part get installed?_
Ideally, the answer should be immediately available.
In fact, this is usually not the case in most plants currently.
AIoT addresses this through its infrastructure layer. By using RFID check-points, BLE tracking fields, and MES data streams to track every single piece of component, container, rack, and work-in-progress product, a comprehensive digital genealogical record of each product and every piece part will be automatically formed. There is no human interference necessary, and therefore no information gap.
The VIN number linkage of each recorded piece part establishes an even more complete trace of a specific vehicle, connecting it directly to every single component it contained. If there's any flaw detected in a certain batch of parts, the VIN number linked to every single one of them will be instantaneously located. Weeks of searching for the cause may be resolved in hours. Rather than expending additional parts unnecessarily due to the uncertainty of the problem scope, the precise impact zone will be narrowed down.
When tracing each item through the entire chain from receiving to shipping to vehicle assembly, it would establish linkages from inbound materials all the way to manufactured products. This will not only maintain an audit-trail of who was accountable, but also provide easy traceability in the event any problem may arise in the supply chain from Tier 1 suppliers down to Tier 2 as well.
Car recalls will remain an inherent problem in auto manufacturing. Nevertheless, a meticulously designed, controlled, and targeted product recall often relies on the speed and precision with which it is initiated and resolved. AIoT gives the speed needed for that task.
Learn about VIN-linked tracing and intelligent connected production at compentraai.com
Check out the platform and see real-world auto tracing in action.
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