Patent ID: 7136721

Claim:
An article management system, comprising: an article to which an article RF tag storing information pertaining to the article to be manufactured and a label recording information of the article are attached; a case containing a plurality of the articles, a case RF tag attached to the case for storing at least ID information of the case; a plurality of article management apparatus each disposed at a respective process stage position in a production line for reading information through an RF tag reader from the article RF tags attached to the articles within the case and the case RF tag attached to the case; and a server that is connected to the respective article management apparatus for managing ID information of the articles, a quantity of the articles, and a current process stage position that are stored in a database corresponding to each of the cases; wherein said article management apparatus, comprising: a display; a transmitting means for transmitting information read by the RF tag reader to said server, a display control means, when said article management apparatus receives from said server a notice on any of the articles whose tag has not been read from, for causing a reading-impairment instruction selection screen to be displayed on the display urging an operator to determine whether or not to inform to the sever of impairment of reading from said any of the article RF tags; and a reading-impairment notifying means, when the operator selects the reading-impairment instruction on the tag-impairment instruction selection screen, for notifying said server of the “impairment of reading” from said any of the article RF tags; and wherein said server, comprising: a collating means, when the server receives the information from said article managing apparatus that the RF tag reader has read, for collating information received from said article managing apparatus with information read from the database in respect to ID information of the articles, quantity, and process stage position corresponding to each of the cases; a transmitting means, when any of the articles whose RF tag is found not to have been read from as a result of the collation, for informing of said any of the articles as one whose tag has not been read from to said article management apparatus from which said server has received the relative information; a setting means, when said server receives the notification from said article management apparatus on the impairment of reading from said any of the articles, for setting for the “reading-impairment” by said RF tag reader/writer relating to an ID information of said any of the articles within the corresponding case.