At RFID Journal LIVE 2023, Prof. Antonio Rizzi together with Julien Destraves, Michelin’s RFID system designer, analysed and discussed RFID’s use in tires.
Digitization is becoming increasingly important to the automotive industry. Tire manufacturers have started deploying and testing RFID in their tires to track every individual tire from the point of manufacture to disposal in order to gain improved traceability throughout the supply chain, enable the management of inventory logistics, aftermarket maintenance, and recycling operations.
Tagging tires with RFID is currently in the early-adopter phase. Tire manufacturers, such as Michelin and Bridgestone, are testing or has recently begun the tagging phase explains Prof. Rizzi at the conference, stressing that if the industry starts adopting RFID for all tires, this could radically change the size of the RFID industry raising the overall RFID tag sales by 5 percent above the current market.
Who benefits from RFID tagged Tires
Rizzi underlines how both Automotive companies as well as distributors or dealers can gain benefits from the information related to the RFID tags embedded into the tires.
Automotive companies can benefit from the tagged tires as part of their work-in-progress (WIP), to confirm that the right tires are installed on the right vehicle in the production line as well as receiving information on when their tires are transported and repaired.
The distributor or dealer can manage their inventory better while also benefitting from the easy, fast, and accurate identification of each tire.
Data management challenges – the need for standardization and data sharing
One of the problems the manufacturers encountered while initially testing the technology, Rizzi explains, was the sharing of data throughout the complex tire supply chain. To overcome this challenge and enable the exchange of data between manufacturers a non-profit organization was created. The Global Data Service Organization for Tires and Automotive Components (GDSO) was established with the purpose of standardizing the tire data and collectively manage the data associated with each tire ID (SGTIN-96) regardless of the manufacturing source. In this way data can be collectively managed and exchanged in a database, that is managed so that users have access only to the data relevant to them.
Technical challenges – the need for a robust and highly reliable tag
RFID Lab works with Michelin and supports tag manufacturer Murata to test the applications and use cases for the RFID tags. From a technical point of view embedding a tag into a tire is particularly challenging. The tag needs to withstand heat during production and very harsh conditions during usage (various weather conditions, road surfaces etc). They also need to function over a long period of time. Michelin, in collaboration with Murata, has developed an embeddable tag already used in commercial vehicles, such as lorries, busses and passenger cars.
RFID tire management and adoption to increase
From optimized inbound/outbound logistic and traceability to tire testing and aftersales services, today the use cases and benefits related to tire management with RFID are already various. Therefore, states Rizzi, adoption will most certainly increase significantly over the next coming years.