"Viewing wireless LANs as a mission-critical infrastructure for its manufacturing operations, General Motors Corp. by year’s end will have installed them in all 25 of its North American assembly plants. GM will initially use the massive in-plant wireless LAN infrastructure to track materials and replenish parts at stations on its assembly lines. But once the wireless LANs are in place, according to Clif Triplett, global information officer for manufacturing and quality at GM, they can be used to support a wide range of other applications. Those include access to computer-aided design drawings and plant configuration information, which Triplett called a "virtual factory" database."
