Tampere, Finland,19 May, 2008 - Nokian Tyres has taken a RFID based Manufacturing Execution System into use in their tyre manufacturing process. The solution is probably the first and largest production deployment of UHF RFID based system in Finland. The new system is used to plan, track and control the tread component production at the Nokian Tyres production plant located in Nokia. Additionally, Nokian Tyres is now able to monitor their production in real-time and ensure the availability of tyre materials.

In the Finnish market, this project is truly ground braking and significant a step towards full adoption of the benefits RFID has to offer as a technology. Urpo Rossi, Quality Manager at Nokian Tyres, comments: "With this new solution we were able to renew our processes. This has yielded more efficient production processes and automated reporting. We have also been able to raise the traceability of our products to a whole new level as well as real-time visibility over our buffer stock. The new system is a great tool for production management and at the same time it enables us to enhance and develop our processes and knowledge."

Trackway delivered Manufacturing software to Nokian Tyres accompanied by RFID Readers URP1000-ETSI from EB. The EB RFID Readers were tuned to adapt to the harsh industrial environment by utilising the EB Identification Network's network management techniques. These management techniques enable deployment of multiple RFID readers close to each other in challenging interference conditions still achieving high data acquisition performance. The chosen approach together with high availability architecture also guarantees full scalability of the system. The tread wagons used in production process were serialised with Confidex Survivor^TM RFID tags that are designed especially for harsh environments and metal surfaces. A total of 40 RFID readers and some 1000 RFID tags were deployed at Nokian Tyres during this project.

Further information including the case study and image gallery of the production site can be found from a joint effort material portal located at www.elektrobit.com/rfid/nokiantyres