IBM and OATSystems announced on April 10 that Airbus has selected them to provide a software solution for a multi-million dollar, multi-year RFID project that will help streamline Airbus' supply chain and manufacturing operations and significantly reduce its aircraft production and maintenance costs.
The project represents the manufacturing industrys single largest RFID software transaction to date. Airbus objective is to error-proof and automate its supply chain and manufacturing operations, while also reducing costs.
The IBM/OAT solution runs on IBMs RFID infrastructure, which is powered by service oriented architecture technology that includes the IBM WebSphere Premises Server and the IBM Business Process Management portfolio, including WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Business Monitor. The IBM Tivoli Monitoring and IBM Tivoli Composite Application software products will be used for infrastructure monitoring. The solution will use OATSystems business applications including the OAT Foundation Suite, Asset Tracking and Work-in-Process solutions.
The flexible architecture enables it to distribute computing to devices such as RFID readers, handheld devices, servers or any combination of those. Using this solution, Airbus will be able to deploy applications centrally at its distributed facilities, or even at remote third-party sites to address specific business scenarios.
Airbuss decision to use RFID across its operations sends a clear signal to manufacturers -- that RFID isnt a technology for someday, it can bring manufacturers a competitive edge right now, said Martin Wildberger, vice president, RFID solutions, IBM. By giving Airbus greater visibility into its business processes, RFID can help serve as an engine for business transformation inside Airbus and across its partner network.
IBM and OAT will be making their solution available to Airbus suppliers and customers, so that they can benefit from the same RFID advantages.
