General Motors Wireless Initiatives, part 1

In a September 2005 InformationWeek article on wireless and RFID in vehicle manufacturing Eric Chabrow had this to say about General Motors' wireless initiatives,

Sep 19, 2005 12:00 General Motors Corp. has begun mounting wireless terminals on its material-delivery fork trucks. Truck operators get real-time updates for material requests to deliver vehicle parts to the production line in a just-in-time manner. GM contends that using a wireless fork truck makes its operators more responsive, so the company requires fewer overall employees to deliver materials to the production-line side.

Two other factory-floor wireless initiatives drive efficiencies at GM plants. The automated guided-vehicles system employs wireless connections to route a specific car to the next logical point in the assembly process. And a new application for PDAs gives team leaders up-to-the-second information on problems that need immediate attention. The carmaker uses the 802.11b/g standard for general-purpose wireless coverage and 802.11a for bandwidth-hungry apps. GM employs firewalls at each plant to secure wirelessly transmitted data.

This article is very good in general, but omits discussion of the numerous initiatives under way at GM with regard to cellular coverage, sensor-based wireless networks, two-way radio, physical layer security, and other RF-based efforts.