Opportunities for using RFID in the aircraft production process

This paper presents the results of the economical evaluation of the possibility of RFID technology adoption in an European company involved in the manufacturing of the fuselage of a new long-range, mid-size, wide-body jet airliner made of carbon fibre reinforced polymer. The peculiar constraints to the management of some of the raw materials – Time And Temperature Sensitive (TATS) materials – has pushed the Company to consider RFID tags introduction despite the fact that the material supplier did not provide any support. Thus, the most important impulse to the introduction of the RFID system in the Company has been given by the problems encountered in the management of TATS materials. However, further analyses are presented on the opportunity for the Company of extending RFID application to non-TATS materials. In this sense, several scenarios are presented, evaluating investment in hardware and tags costs with respect to advantages in terms of time savings in material handling processes or costs saving in terms of inventory misalignment reductions. In most scenarios, RFID introduction resulted to be profitable.