custom signs

July 27, 2011—German logistics giant DB Schenker is employing RFID tags with temperature-logging capabilities to track the conditions under which sensitive medical goods are transported to the United States. The tags are being rolled out for temperature-tracking applications involving products forwarded by air, sea, land and rail.

According to Eleftherios Skountridakis, who leads DB Schenker’s RFID implementation efforts in Germany, the temperature-tracking project for airfreight—which began with an initial pilot in January 2010, and continued in October with ongoing testing of the technology—is now utilizing 350 battery-assisted passive, reusable tags. Most were rolled out to track goods that begin their journey at DB Schenker’s warehouse in Mannheim, and that must be stored at temperatures between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees and 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit), or between 15 degrees and 25 degrees Celsius (59 degrees and 77 degrees Fahrenheit), depending on the product.

DB Schenker relies on tags designed by Siemens that were originally created for blood-monitoring applications.

“Our research showed that the solution was the best one from a pricing, calibration and battery-life perspective,” Skountridakis explains. Only the tags’ software was modified, in order to make it compatible with the company’s database, as well as provide greater detail for the DB Schenker application. The tags include a small LED light that blinks red multiple times if temperatures fall outside of a pre-designated range. If temperatures have remained within the defined range, the light blinks green every six seconds. The 13.56 MHz high-frequency (HF) tags, known as SensoTags, are manufactured by Schweizer Electronic, located in Germany. These tags contain 60 kilobytes of memory, and comply with the ISO 15693 RFID standard. Each tag is encoded with a 16-digit alphanumerical unique ID number, which is also printed on the tag’s exterior as a bar code.

Each week, DB Schenker and its client—a global pharmaceuticals company that DB Schenker declines to name—decide which goods will be monitored in two temperature-controlled shipments to the United States. The selected goods are often reagents—liquid solutions transported in small jars, and used to identify illnesses. The firm’s client is using RFID tags to monitor shipping temperatures as part of its quality-control measures, and to comply with regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

DB Schenker is covering the cost of the RFID test, which involves shipments to five U.S. companies. The firm is utilizing the application to demonstrate to its customers its ability to manage the cold chain. “The proof will be in the RFID tags,” Skountridakis states. “It’s a door-opener with new customers.” What’s more, DB Schenker wants to verify that airlines are meeting their commitments to control temperatures.

July 25, 2011—Change is tough, and Gerry Weber International, a German-based women’s clothing designer and retailer, had big changes in mind—using radio frequency identification technology to track items throughout its supply chain and in its retail stores. The idea was to incorporate RFID tags with electronic article surveillance (EAS) functionality for loss prevention into each garment’s product-care label. So when the company set out on its ambitious plan, it adopted a conservative strategy. “We revolutionize business processes where it doesn’t hurt,” says Gerry Weber CIO Christian von Grone.

Gerry Weber’s philosophy dates back to summer 2009, when the company first piloted RFID technology in four stores. von Grone says that’s when he discovered that to many store employees, “RFID is voodoo.” The company decided to minimize confusion regarding RFID by leaving some of its most important processes—including checkout—unchanged. Similarly, the implementation of RFID at the point of manufacture didn’t require suppliers to adjust any of their procedures.

Marrying its ambitious RFID plans with a managed approach has allowed Gerry Weber to realize its goals. Today, the company is RFID-tracking approximately 20 percent of the 25 million items it produces annually, under brand names including Gerry Weber, Gerry Weber Edition and G.W., as well as Samoon and Taifun by Gerry Weber. This involves working with some 240 outsourced manufacturing partners in China, Turkey and other countries, as well as the company-owned plant in Romania, a handful of third-party transport and warehouse logistics partners, and roughly 200 House of Gerry Weber stores in Germany.

July 18, 2011—Currently, most shipping containers are secured with mechanical seals that employ simple bolt or cable-lock mechanisms. But a bolt or lock can be removed and replaced without the shipper’s knowledge. Some companies have begun to use electronic seals that have physical protection, such as a bolt, as well as a sensor that can monitor for tampering, or some other electronic way to ensure goods are protected. And some e-seals include active or passive radio-frequency technologies to secure containers, as well as provide supply-chain visibility.

But these RFID e-seals are not designed for small boxes or cases. The Wi Protect Company, an RFID solutions provider in Sydney, Australia, recently asked the Auto-ID Lab at the University of Adelaide to develop an electronically readable tag to secure small shipping cases, such as ammunition, file or medical boxes. Another objective was to make the RFID e-seal cost-effective to deploy, which could best be achieved with shipping boxes that have a fixed chamber.

We designed the RFID tag to have an “off-on-off” function. The first “off” means that before the RFID-enabled e-seal is attached to a box, the tag cannot be detected by an RFID reader. The “on” means that when the e-seal is attached to the box, the tag becomes readable and can be monitored remotely. The second “off” means the tag cannot be detected by a reader, and occurs when the e-seal has been compromised or broken to gain access to the box.

It may seem that the first “off” is not very important in the overall protection scheme, but it is required to prevent an unscrupulous person from improperly attaching the e-seal to the box, allowing the tag to be read although the seal was not secured. Consequently, the tag’s status in the view of the reader would always be “on,” even though the box might have been opened.

In our design, the first “off” is realized by disconnecting the antenna from the tag microcircuit while simultaneously placing a short circuit across the antenna to render it ineffective. So unlike other e-seals, when the reader is moved close to the tag, the tag cannot be read before it is attached on the box. The final “off” operation occurs when an intruder or legitimate user breaks the seal to open the box, thereby disconnecting the tag antenna and chip.

The e-seal, which measures roughly 70 millimeters by 45 millimeters (2.8 inches by 1.8 inches), has a read range of 500 millimeters (20 inches). We believe a much longer read range could be obtained in a future version using modified materials.

Wi Protect patented the RFID-enabled e-seal, which works only with boxes that have a permanently attached chamber. The next step is to develop this solution for shipping bags.

Peter Cole is the research director of the Auto-ID Lab at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. Zhonghao Hu is a research associate at the lab and has a doctorate from the university’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

July 14, 2011—Finnish state-owned railroad operator VR Group and its VR Transpoint subsidiary, Finland’s largest logistics services provider, are employing EPC Gen 2 RFID technology to track 10,000 rail-freight wagons, locomotives and passenger cars, thereby helping the company and its subsidiary to manage rail cars and work processes within its rail yards.

VR Group implemented radio frequency identification to improve the efficiency of its rail-yard processes, better manage rail-car inventory and maintenance orders, and provide improved customer service—for instance, by delivering detailed information to customers regarding which shipments have arrived, and when.

Mikko Särkkä, VR Group’s head of logistics IT, believes the application is the world’s first full-scale implementation of an EPC Gen 2 RFID system in the rail industry. The solution relies on Confidex’s Ironside tags, protected by plastic housings measuring 8 millimeters (0.3 inch) think, that are read by 350 Psion Workabout Pro handheld readers. The system is currently operational at 50 locations throughout Finland. VR Group invested roughly €2 million ($2.8 million) in the project, for hardware, software and consulting.

VR Group attached two tags to each rail car on both sides, complying with the technical specification regarding interoperability for telematic applications for freight (TAF/TSI), as regulated by the European Railway Agency (ERA).

One advantage of the RFID system, Särkkä says, is that VR Transpoint personnel can now identify wagons automatically, and at a distance, by using the handheld readers—workers can walk alongside a train and use the devices to interrogate each rail car’s tags. As they do so, the wagons are identified and the information is automatically transferred to the logistics system. If, for instance, a train car is slated to be removed from one train and shifted to another, this information will be displayed on the employee’s screen. Likewise, after wagons have been shifted and a new train has been assembled in the yard, workers can confirm that the cars are located behind the correct locomotive, and in the intended order.

Prior to VR Transpoint’s adoption of the RFID system, this process involved manually using pen and paper, and took much longer to notify customers about which cars had arrived, as well as each wagon’s position on the train (for example, first, third or fifth).

Such information is vital for the companies receiving the goods, so that they can know whether a particular rail car will arrive with the front end or the back end facing forward (since cars can be connected on a train in either orientation). Since each of a car’s two RFID tags is encoded with a bit of data to indicate whether that tag was installed on the car’s left or right side, the system knows the direction in which each car is being pulled—that is, whether it is facing forward or backward.

July 11, 2011—French third-party logistics company SeD Logistiques is using an ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) Gen 2 RFID system from Tagsys at its Paris distribution center to improve the services it provides to its brand-name apparel manufacturers, by moving products faster and with less risk of inaccuracies than its competitors. The solution, which went live two weeks ago, provides the company with the ability to automatically track the receiving, packing and shipping of fashion apparel, and to provide one of SeD’s apparel customers with data regarding its products’ movements through SeD’s DC, thereby enabling the customer’s own inventory management and stock replenishment.

SeD moves a total of 5 million to 10 million garments through its facility annually for approximately five customers; this involves receiving and storing products, and then packing and shipping specific orders for retail stores. One customer, which has asked to remain unnamed, has begun tagging each of its fashion items with an EPC Gen 2 passive RFID tag, and had requested that SeD install an RFID infrastructure to begin reading the tags, as well to automate its receiving and shipping processes. The brand-name apparel company is employing Tagsys’ Fashion Item Tracking System (FiTS) solution at two of its own warehouses—one in the United States, and another in Europe—as well as at 70 retail stores across Europe and United States. In an effort to continue leveraging the RFID system into the supply chain, SeD’s management hoped that if the firm began reading the RFID tags as well, the brand company could then have further inventory data about the amount of product located at the logistics center, and the amount being received and shipped.

“We were thinking about implementing RFID before [for reception and order preparation process optimization],” says Pascale Barbier, SeD’s sales and special project director, but the customer’s request “was the real trigger.” He adds that the customer requested that SeD utilize Tagsys as its vendor.

Since installing the solution at its Paris facility late last month, SeD has used the system to track which items are received at the warehouse—SeD has a total of 70,000 square meters (753,500 square feet) of space dedicated to all of its fashion logistics operations—as well as what is packed for retailer orders and what is loaded onto trucks destined to those retailers.