RFID for Industrial Molds: Predictive Maintenance Based on Real Usage Cycles

The Client

A manufacturer of molds for the dairy industry produces molds used in food production, deployed and reassembled dozens of times a week at the client dairies. Each mold goes through a continuous cycle of use, cleaning and reassembly, in a context where production efficiency and equipment lifespan are closely tied to the real frequency of use.

The Challenge

The client had no visibility into how many use cycles each individual mold had actually completed. Maintenance was scheduled on a time basis — "calendar-based" — rather than on real work cycles: an approach that almost inevitably leads to two opposite, and equally costly, mistakes. Intervening too late, causing an unplanned production stoppage in the middle of a run. Or intervening too early, wasting resources on a mold still far from its actual maintenance threshold.

The technical challenge was far from secondary: a tag applied to a mold used in food production must survive repeated thermal cycles — the heat of washdowns and the cold of storage — constant contact with fatty materials, and frequent washes with aggressive detergents, all while remaining perfectly readable throughout the mold's often multi-year working life.

The Wintag Solution

Wintag designed a tag with specific materials and resin formulation, engineered to withstand heat, grease and aggressive detergents typical of the dairy environment on a continuous basis. The tag automatically records every use cycle of the mold, giving the client an objective figure — the actual number of cycles completed — instead of a calendar-based estimate.

The design required specific work on the chip encapsulation, to guarantee mechanical and chemical seal integrity even after hundreds of high-temperature wash cycles, without compromising readability or the strength of the mold's fastening.

The Results

The client moved from reactive or calendar-based maintenance to predictive maintenance, based on the real usage cycles of each individual mold. The benefit translates into fewer unplanned production stoppages, maintenance interventions scheduled at the right moment rather than by approximation, and a longer working life for each mold, with a direct impact on production efficiency and mold fleet management costs.

Technology Used

For applications on molds and equipment subject to intensive thermal and chemical cycles, Wintag evaluates the most suitable combination of chip, encapsulation and resin for the specific context — food, plastics or industrial — taking into account the maximum temperature reached during washing, the type of detergent used and the frequency of cycles. Automatic cycle counting can be integrated with the client's existing maintenance management systems (CMMS), to generate automatic alerts once the intervention threshold is reached.

Do you have molds — food-grade, plastic or industrial — subject to intensive use and frequent washing, and would you like to know how many cycles they have really done? Let's talk: we can design together the right RFID solution for your process.