Component Tracking with 2D Codes
A leading supplier to the aerospace industry manufactures critical components for use in flight, and there was a requirement to track the products through the manufacturing process to ensure that each is correctly manufactured with no missing operations or defects. The product is subject to several discrete manufacturing operations one after another, and before the tracking system all the tracking operations were done by paperwork, which can be prone to human error.
Products were uniquely identified by means of a permanently applied 2D code, and using this code together with barcode reading stations at each processing cell together with Siemens S7 PLCs and WinCC, the products were tracked throughout the process with operators being prompted with workflow instructions, thus faulty products are positively eliminated from the process and incorrect workflow operations prevented. As a result each and every product has an electronic history, and from this data the client can produce and print a production record for each and every component.