Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): A co-generation tool in Product Life cycle Management (PLM)

Abstract

Product life cycle management (PLM) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) when properly amalgamated aids product development throughout the lifecycle of the product design and narrows the gap between OEM (design team) and customer by providing real-time information about product failures thereby increasing product lifecycle. Therefore, this paper enhances the pros and cons of RFID in PLM as a co-generation tool and the benefits of using RFID in assembling critical components are elucidated. The PLM-RFID solution embraces a demand-focused supply chain representation by integrating suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to share product movement data and feeds valuable inputs for new product development. To illustrate the benefits of PLM-RFID amalgamation in enterprise application we have developed middleware to facilitate data communication between RFID readers and PLM databases.