RFID Case Study: Railway Tracking & Monitoring
Kathrein
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In order to further improve its logistics, McBride, a leading European manufacturer and distributor of cleaning products, was looking for a solution enabling the automatic detection and localization of their reusable outer boxes (filled with cleaning products) throughout the internal process flow. Aucxis suggested implementing the standard ATLAS Item Identification & Tracking solution.
Challenge
The ‘McBride Liquids’ site in Ieper manufactures an extensive range of liquid cleaning products (220 million units on an annual basis), including (dishwasher) detergents and surface cleaners. McBride also produces the bottles in which the products are filled and packaged. For an easy storage and transport of these bottles, McBride decided to use a standard cardboard packaging with predefined dimensions (further defined as ‘outer box’). In order to further improve its logistics, McBride wanted to know at all times the exact location of the boxes.
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Solution
Aucxis suggested implementing the standard ATLAS Item Identification & Tracking solution, thanks to which the outer boxes are identified and localized by means of passive RFID technology.
Detection/tracing of the reusable outer boxes during the process
At the start of the project McBride purchased approximately 40.000 durable, preprogrammed UHF RFID label tags. Furthermore, every reusable outer box was equipped with tags. During the process an empty outer box is placed at a filling station in the production hall. Next, an automatic system fills the outer box with empty bottles. Once filled with the desired number of bottles, the outer box is carried to a chain conveyor for transport outside the production hall. The filling stations and the corresponding chain conveyors serve as fixed RFID detection points and are equipped with RFID readers and antennas. The Aucxis middleware HERTZ enables to transmit the detections during the production process to McBride’s MES system.
Localisation in the storage room thanks to ATLAS equipment
At the end of the chain conveyors, several forklifts are ready to transport the outer boxes to the storage room where they are stored until the filling department is ready to receive them. In every row of the storage room, passive RFID tags were mounted in the floor in order to mark zones. The forklifts are in turn equipped with our standard ATLAS hardware kit, enabling to read the floor tags and the RFID labels on the outer boxes. The Aucxis middleware HERTZ registers the data of the floor tags, translates them into a logic location and then transmits them to McBride’s front-end MES software.
Result
- Flawless detection and localization in real time;
- Manual scan actions are avoided, which reduces the pressure on the logistics employees;
- Generic solution: in the future, McBride can equip as many storage locations as desired with ATLAS;
- Seamless integration with the systems of McBride through the Aucxis middleware HERTZ.
About
Aucxis offers powerful and flexible RFID solutions through hardware installation and development of RFID middleware and interfaces. As an independent integrator, Auxcis helps customers define and aquire the RFID components best suited to meet customer objectives.
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