Industry: Automotive plastic components | Application: Injection moulding | Technology: UHF RFID (REFLECTA) | Machine range: 50–1500 tons
The challenge
An automotive plastic moulding operation runs many moulds across a fleet of injection moulding machines from 50 to 1500 tons. Moulds look alike, are heavy and expensive, and are changed frequently. Mounting the wrong mould caused scrap and downtime; mould usage was tracked on paper, so preventive maintenance was guesswork; and linking a batch of moulded parts back to the exact mould and machine — a routine requirement in automotive quality audits — was slow and manual.
The solution
Convalexa deployed RFID mold mapping using its Make-in-India REFLECTA range:
- Each mould was fitted with a rugged IP67 metal-mount UHF RFID tag, encoded with a unique ID.
- Each injection moulding machine (50–1500 tons) was fitted with a UHF RFID reader and antenna positioned to read the mounted mould.
- On every mould change, the system identifies the mould, validates the mould–machine–job pairing before the cycle starts, and logs each shot automatically.
The outcome
| Before | After RFID mold mapping |
|---|
| Wrong mould occasionally mounted → scrap, downtime, mould damage | Mould–machine pairing validated automatically before each run |
| Shot counts tracked on paper, maintenance by guesswork | Automatic shot counting triggers preventive maintenance on time |
| Moulds hard to locate in storage | Each mould individually identified and tracked |
| Manual, slow part-to-mould traceability | Every batch digitally linked to its mould and machine |