PRESS RELEASES
Toyota South Africa Motors Ltd. Selects Alien Technology® RFID Solution for Vehicle Identification
Automated vehicle tracking will accelerate throughput of produced assets in the supply chain, resulting in reduction of time to invoice dealers and thus time-to-cash
October 17, 2005, Morgan Hill, CA – Alien Technology Corporation today announced that Toyota Motor Corporation’s South African operation, Toyota South Africa Motors (Pty) Ltd., has selected Alien® RFID products as the basis for its automated vehicle identification application. The use of Alien’s low-cost, EPC-compliant RFID tags and readers will enable the automotive manufacturer to accurately and cost-effectively track vehicles from post-production to shipment, thus helping to reduce the time required to invoice dealers on new vehicle shipments.
“ Toyota is a quality driven company, in every aspect of our business, and requiring the highest quality and reliability standards from our vendors plays a major role in our global success,” said Johan Stoop, Senior Manager, Manufacturing Engineering Services for Toyota South Africa . “We are impressed with the Alien complete industry-standard solution, which provides consistent and reliable reads , as well as the outstanding performance in reading ranges over the many RFID solutions evaluated.”
Traditionally, RFID-based vehicle tracking applications have been hampered by the use of costly microwave systems and proprietary RFID protocols. Toyota ’s application will benefit from the use of open, global-standard EPC RFID technology that combines consistent reads, even in a heavy metallic environment, with the ability to leverage extremely low-cost RFID tags. In Toyota ’s implementation, an Alien RFID tag will be applied to each vehicle during production. The tags will then be accurately read by field-proven Alien ALR-9780 readers at ranges exceeding six meters as the vehicle is tracked from within the Assembly Plant, through the Plant Exit, into, through and out of the Vehicle Distribution Yard. The resulting precision tracking will enable Toyota to both streamline and accelerate its vehicle shipping and invoicing processes, and thus its time-to-cash. According to Stoop, the anticipated savings on interest for the targeted reduction of Stock (vehicles “on rubber”) of one day is expected to more than off-set the CAPEX for this RFID Project.
“This is one of the world’s first such application involving low-cost EPC compliant tags and readers and tremendous opportunities exist for this solution to be leveraged by other automotive and heavy equipment manufacturers,” said Andrew Berger, Vice-President International for Alien Technology. “It’s well-known that Toyota occupies a best-in-class standing when it comes to production and automation processes. Its decision to implement Alien’s EPC-compliant solution demonstrates a commitment to supporting global open RFID protocols.”
About Toyota SA Motors
Toyota South Africa , established in 1961, has been the overall market leader in terms of domestic vehicle sales for more than 25 consecutive years. The company has now been integrated into the global supplier network of Toyota Motor Corporation after TMC took a 75% majority shareholding in the company in 2002. The current production capacity of Toyota SA’s plant in Durban is in excess of 100 000 vehicles annually. This is set to expand to 220 000 units per annum by 2008. The South African operation now exports built up units to both Australia and Europe.
Toyota SA has demonstrated their commitment to the economic development of the KwaZulu-Natal region by attracting component suppliers to the region as well as investing further in its own expansion programme to cater for increased production in the future. One of the latest developments, currently under construction, is an environmentally friendly, high tech water based paint plant. The new paintshop, due for completion in July 2006, will have the capacity to paint 220 000 units a year.
Toyota is very strongly committed to South Africa , its peoples and the regions in which its facilities are located. These initiatives include a large number of corporate social investment projects, most of them targeted at education and training. Toyota SA is also very environmentally aware, both internally and at is network of 220 dealers. Further evidence of this caring corporate attitude includes the introduced of the Prius petrol-electric hybrid car to South Africa .
Contact : Tebogo Rametse
Position: Communications Manager,
Toyota South Africa
Contact: 031 910 2610 / 072 594 9942
About Alien Technology
Alien Technology provides UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products and services to customers in retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, defense, transportation and logistics, pharmaceuticals and other industries. Organizations use Alien's RFID products and services to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and security of their supply chains, logistics and asset tracking operations. Alien's products include RFID tags, RFID readers and related training and professional services. Alien's patented Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA) technology and related proprietary manufacturing processes are designed to enable the manufacture of high volume, low cost RFID tags.
Alien was founded in 1994. The company's facilities include: its corporate headquarters in Morgan Hill, CA; an RFID tag manufacturing facility in Fargo, ND; the Alien RFID Solutions Center, in the Dayton, Ohio area, and sales offices in the US, Europe and Asia. Alien is a member of EPCglobal. More information about Alien is available at www.alientechnology.com.
Alien, Alien Technology, the Alien logo, Squiggle and FSA, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Alien Technology Corporation in the United States and other countries. Copyright 2007 Alien Technology Corporation. All rights reserved.
