Study On Process Model Of RFID Adoption And Its Application Issues For Automotive Manufacturing Enterprises

Under the influence of economic globalization, knowledge economy and sustainable development, automobile manufacturing enterprises should fast response to the constantly changeable market, the products produced must meet customer's individualized demand and provide additional value without driving up costs, sacrificing quality, or delaying product delivery. Nowadays, automobile manufacturing enterprises are still face some challenges such as control the internal and external resources related to manufacturing process in supply chain in a real-time combination coordinated way and realize enterprise internal fine management. The emergence of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) provide feasible scheme to solve the problems above. Although RFID has been preliminary applied to large-scale automobile manufacturing enterprises home and abroad and has formed some successful cases, most domestic automobile manufacturing enterprises are doubt if they should adopt RFID technology or how to use it? The process model of RFID adoption and its application issues for automotive manufacturing enterprises have been studied based on literature analysis, theoretical research and case study to promote the successful implementation of RFID system and provide valuable model and methodology to automotive manufacturing enterprises.The research background has been introduced in two aspects: changes of manufacturing environment for automotive manufacturers and problems automotive manufacturers have to face in the new environment. The research content and ways have been put forward based on the investigation the research history of RFID application in the world, especially the application in manufacturing industry.According to the RFID application status and difficulties in automotive manufacturing enterprises, the whole process model of RFID adoption has been put forward based on the review of information technology adoption theories. The process model which contains two phases: pre-adoption phase, post- adoption phase taking information technology adoption process as main line and information technology adoption behavior as guidance, and can be divided into 9 steps.Based on the research findings on influencing factors of RFID adoption abroad, features of automobile production line and its special demands on RFID, the influencing factors set of RFID adoption was presented from organizational level and individual level. 17 Influencing factors have been screened based on fuzzy delphi method; fuzzy AHP method was adopted to identify critical influencing factors. Results indicate initial cost, product performance, information technology capability, integration and leadership as five most critical influencing factors.Based on the analysis on evolution process, evolution law and development trend of manufacturing modes for automotive manufacturers, the application requirement in automotive manufacturing enterprises were discussed in three study angles: manufacturer, supply chain and product lifecycle. The structure of RFID system in automotive manufacturing enterprises has been put forward, the function structure, information flow model and technology architecture of RFID system have been studied. The operation target of RFID system operation has been proposed and the Space-time dimensions of RFID system's operation have been described, the connotation, operation mechanism and information flows in closed-loop product lifecycle management were described from product lifecycle dimension, the four application levels—unit-level application, tactic-level application, Strategy-level application and supply chain-level application of RFID system were described from application field dimension.The requirements and compilation principles of RFID application standard architecture for automobile production line have been discussed in terms of RFID system framework and its application process. The application standard architecture takes simplified four-layer system structure of RFID system as its mainline, composed of basic standard, general standard, physical layer standard, collection layer standard, integration layer standard, application layer standard, coding standard and application profile have been constructed combining the production characteristics of automobile production line and referencing other information standard architecture. At last, the process model of RFID adoption for automotive manufacturing enterprises is applied to S factory and its feasibility has been proved. The automation level, management level, product quality and production efficiency have been promoted by the successful implementation of RFID system.