Design Guidelines for RFID-Based Applications in Manufacturing

The RFID technology opens new opportunities to monitor and control manufacturing processes. Therefore more and more manufacturers consider the introduction of RFID in their production lines. However, RFID projects face various challenges when designing the software infrastructure. In this paper we present design principles which guide application designers in developing and adapting RFID solutions for manufacturing environments. We have derived these design guidelines from a Product Line Analysis (PLA) based on several case studies that we have conducted at manufacturers. Here we systematically identify core assets of RFID applications in manufacturing. Based on the PLA we present a toolset of standard components and their variations along with guidelines for the application design. These guidelines cover processing paradigms for RFID data and heuristics for distributing data and logic in the IT system.