Reliance Electric (Greenville, SC) is required by government regulation to have cradle-to-grave traceability for every electric motor it produces. It also competes in an increasingly global marketplace where the quality of its products is central to success against producers in other low-cost countries. In both of these areas, the company has made great strides by implementing an industrial RFID system to track parts and monitor its manufacturing processes.
Prior to going with a full-blown RFID system, the plant tried a host of other identification technologies, ranging from paper-based systems to bar codes. Inevitably, these approaches fell short of the company's needs. In the end, Reliance Electric went with a network based on passive HMS150 RFID tags from Escort Memory Systems (Scotts Valley, CA).