RFID Fresh Produce Packaging App
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a term used for any device that can be sensed at a distance by radio frequencies with few problems of obstruction. The origins of the term lie in the invention of tags that reflect or retransmit a radiofrequency signal. According to a recent article by Forrester Research, the minimal ‘Slap and Ship’ approach to RFID compliance will cost an individual company between $2 million and $20 million. Because retailers like Wal-Mart plan to share with their suppliers all the RFID-generated data points (from when a case/pallet enters their distribution centre until it leaves their stockroom), suppliers will eventually be able to use this data as a powerful forecasting tool. RFID is an enabling technology that can potentially facilitate a real-time, end-to-end supply chain visibility system. Suppliers who integrate full-scale RFID systems will realize efficiencies in time, material movement, inventory planning, shipping and warehousing both internally and externally. This paper provides a brief overview of the RFID technology, mandates by retailers and federal agencies, advances towards global standardization and typical consumer level RFID applications, and discusses RFID initiatives taken by some of the global leaders in apparel, consumer goods and fresh produce industries.
Achieving traceability with RFID
When we talk here about food, we are referring to the industries that carry out procedures for processing, packaging and storing food products.
Due to its own food safety regulations, this type of industry needs to add a series of data to each manufactured product to obtain traceability. Thus, key data such as:
Best-before dates
Packaging or production batches
Variable weights, gross and net weights
Recording of conditions such as temperature, humidity or others
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Processes where RFID adds value
There is no doubt that the emergence of RFID technology applied to the food sector has streamlined and optimised all processes in the chain from start to finish and provides real-time data that ensures food safety and compliance with traceability regulations. Some of the processes where RFID adds value are:
Identifying codes, dates and supplier batches upon reception
Capturing data during processing
Labelling according to traceability regulations
Obtain full visibility of the productivity
Avoid obsolete or out-of-date stock with proper inventory alert management
Guarantee shipments to your customers
Integrate real-time movements and data with your IT system, ERP, MES, WMS or other systems
Raw material reception
By using RFID technology for the reception of goods, you will manage to reduce manpower by not needing to ‘disassemble’ the pallets. You will also obtain the highest reliability in data capture by entering the information into your management system or ERP.
Warehouse management
Whether it is raw material, semi-finished product or finished product, warehouse management using RFID enables you to leave and pick up goods without human interaction. Use alerts to keep track of your KPIs.
RFID online in processes
With the use of RFID tags and strategically positioned antennas, we will automatically add the information generated in each process and we will obtain the data in real time with the alerts and deviation parameters.
EAN-GS1-128 labelling
Drag and drop data to the outputs of each pallet creation line, associating the inputs, sizes, varieties and related data to the pallets created. Time control per line.
Forward and backward traceability
With the Dipole Data Suite you will be able to obtain the forward and backward traceability of prepared products. Tracing batches, dates, varieties, weights, sizes and related data to the product.
Dipole works with international standards such as GS1, allowing its products to be exported to the EU and the USA in compliance with European and FDA regulations.
Guarantee shipments
The importance of efficient delivery ensures customer loyalty. Check truckloads, orders, batches and dates
"RFID labeling is rapidly gaining traction in the food industry"
Strict specifications and legal guidelines; total precision and exacty hygiene are important in the food industry. Inotec LLC, headquartered in Neumünster, Germany, can look back on more than 40 years of expertise on this. Label materials and adhesives from their own production are ISEGA-certified, making them suitable for direct and indirect contact with food. This is the only way to meet the requirements of today's food trade with absolute reliability. We spoke to Technical Sales Director Stefan Meyer (pictured below) about the latest solutions for labeling reusable containers.
Clean, hygienic, sensible - these are the three key words that are inevitably part of everyday practice at inotec.
In its early days, after its founding in 1978, inotec mainly specialized in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. Later, it gradually expanded its portfolio to include other areas such as logistics and the labeling of reusable containers for fruits and vegetables. "Hygiene is the top priority in the food industry. The packaging process is almost identical for fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables, meat or fish. In addition to product hygiene, traceability of the entire supply chain is a recurring issue. Accordingly, the need for innovative labeling technology has increased, especially in times of Corona," Meyer explains.
Thanks to barcodes or RFID, customers of online delivery services can track the status of their order in real time or via Track & Trace.
Barcode and RFID labels
Basically, there are two different methods for labeling fruit and vegetable batches, namely barcode labels (such as Diobond, Diocard, Diotac, etc.) and RFID technology (InoTag). "The commercially available barcode system is still the most in demand and best suited for numerous purposes. Meanwhile, however, RFID technology is also rapidly gaining ground. Proportionally, RFID products can store more information than a barcode. Whereas a barcode simply designates the type of product, an RFID tag can display much more precise data." Another advantage of rewritable RFID tags is that they can be read without contact.
Relatively new to the portfolio is the InoSpector for monitoring temperature-sensitive products. Unlike other similar solutions, this label with sensor technology has its own active energy source. "Many online services - such as Picnic and Hello Fresh - have a need for a sophisticated temperature detection system to ensure an uninterrupted cold chain. With the InoSpector, we enable users to read the data via smartphone," Meyer outlines.
RFID inmold solutions from inotec
Further development potential for reusable systems
Even in the past year, which was dominated by Corona, inotec LLC was able to record great growth rates. Two companies were acquired, namely identytag (a manufacturer of RFID labels) and Winckel, a consultant for RFID solutions. In the longer term, there is obviously further development potential within the food industry from the supplier's point of view.
"In the to-go sector, a fast-growing market segment, there will be a reusable obligation in the future. Up to now, these items have often been packaged in plastic, but there are already initial approaches to a customized, innovative reusable system. So, durable reusable systems and corresponding identification technology will continue to be a major topic in the industry in the near future," Meyer concludes.
Using RFID to Manage Reusable Transport Items: Case Studies from Automotive and Fresh Produce
Eliminate container and pallet loss. Examples from the field illustrate how RFID enables reusable packaging owners to reduce their need for emergency expendable packaging procurement while allowing them to minimize their pool size
bins landscape
For all of the benefits of reusable packaging, a lack of availability can be, quite literally, a show stopper. “When we don’t have enough, we either stop or slow down production,” stated Tom O’Boyle, Director of RFID for Barcoding, Incorporated. “Customers don’t like to hear we are delayed because we don’t have enough totes.” O’Boyle outlined the advantages of RFID for reusable transport item management at MODEX 2016.
When reusables are not available, manufacturers may be forced to switch to a corrugated cardboard tote or gaylord. “And unfortunately,” O’Boyle added, “unless you can prove otherwise, the expense of those expendable packaging units have a tendency to be pushed to the supplier.”
Other tactics, such as the expediting return of empty reusables to maintain supply, keeping a large on-hand buffer of empties to avoid a shortage, purchasing extra reusable containers to fill shortfalls, and frequent cycle counts of reusable asset inventory, can also translate into inefficiencies, burdening the packaging program with additional cost.
“But what if you knew how many you really had,” O’Boyle asked? “What if you could validate the receipt for the shipment of these units as they’re going in and out. And what if you could know that the unit actually passed inspection and is available to be used internally?” With access to accurate information, RTI owners have the capability to eliminate inefficiencies.
A key element is to find the right tool for the job, O’Boyle noted. Given the line of sight requirement for barcode, passive RFID was the application of choice for the two case studies outlined. For reusable containers, getting a barcode read can be challenging when collapsed and nested with the barcodes inward. The type of container and the application will inform the selection process for tag selection, ranging from label-type tags to encapsulated or hard tags.
RFID reader direction
Readers configured to determine the direction of travel into or out of a zone.
The industry, O’Boyle noted, has matured to the extent that solution providers are not typically dealing with specialized tags or readers. “These are commodity products that we have the ability to get.,” he said. “So I can acquire readers from Company A and reader from Company B.. And they’re going to read the tags from Company C., which is using a worldwide standard.”
Batteries are no longer a requirement. Chip memory will last up to 50 years for passive tags. “One other thing that we see in the industry is that tag prices continue to go down, and our read range continues to go up,” O’Boyle added. He emphasized that in some cases, an active tag makes sense, depending upon the application.
Automotive Case Study: RFID Helps Supplier Avoid $425,000 in Expendable Packaging and Reduce Pool by 40 Percent
The automotive supplier had a pool of about 250,000 totes, which it supplemented with expendable packaging when it did not have reusables available. It spent an average of $450,000 annually for the single-use containers. While the customer would reimburse the cost of expendable packaging if the supplier could prove that the shortage of reusables was the fault of the customer, this in practice was tough to do. The supplier did not have confidence in its data. Due to the labor-intensive requirement of counting returned empty packaging, estimates were made (“I think there are 200 on that pallet.” ) To complicate the issue, many totes looked similar or the same from the outside, but with different dunnage.
As a result, daily cycle counts were required, meaning that someone had to physically move and handled packaging units to count them. Additionally, totes were staged ahead of time to eliminate concern about running short, a practice that caused other inefficiencies.
After the decision to implement RFID, totes went through a tagging process as they returned to the supplier, an implementation that took around three months. Read points were set at the dock doors. “They had very controlled doors,” O’Boyle said. “We knew which doors were in which stores were out which stores were used for individual plants. It was relatively simple.”
After installation, the supplier was able to log the event of every shipment and receipt, including when returning empties were moving in and out of quality assurance. If reusable totes were needed, and it could identify if the required quantities were already in the building, but had not yet cleared quality assurance, the process could be expedited.
For the first time, when reusable container shortages resulted, the supplier had the data to share with the customer to show that there had been a failure to return them, to justify being reimbursed for expendable packaging expenditure. The customer temporarily improved its return rate after receiving the feedback but has subsequently regressed. From the supplier’s perspective, however, it is now being reimbursed for much of the expendable packaging required to cover reusable packaging shortfalls.
The results have been impressive. Over four years into the program, expendable packaging expenditure by the supplier has been reduced by $ 425,000 annually, and it has been able to reduce its pool size from 250,000 reusable totes to less than 150,000. In the process, the supplier has reduced its container storage area, and with confidence in the data, it has completely eliminated its cycle count process.
Fresh Fruit Processor Case Study: RFID Delivers Accurate Data, Identifies Dormant Assets, and Allows Efficient Physical Count
A fresh fruit processor spent $7 million to purchase reusable plastic bins (intermediate bulk containers) to replace an aging inventory of wooden bins. The processor utilized eight 3rd party facilities for bin storage.
Physical counts were daunting to take. The facilities had “huge stacks” of bins that were up to 40 feet in height and nested, with as many as eight or ten rows deep. At the end of each season, the processor would send a counting team of four people to each location to perform an accurate bin inventory, an activity that might take as much as three weeks to perform, and which was recorded on an Excel spreadsheet. Also, there wasn’t a process for managing damaged bins identified during the count.
As part of the solution, the bins were tagged, and readers were installed at the scales, at the gates, and at the driveways to log movements. The processor has a bin cleaning process, and those events were also recorded. “Instantaneously, they knew where 63,000 units were,” O’Boyle stated. Inventory information was available online, for each location. Using RFID handhelds, a physical inventory could be taken in one day by a site employee, versus requiring several weeks by a group of processor employees. The new process eliminated excess labor and travel requirements.
One surprise, accurate data revealed that 20 percent of the bin inventory did not move during the entire growing season. “It stayed in the same place, but was in the wrong place,” O’Boyle said. This visibility allowed the processor to disperse the available bins accordingly. An additional benefit was the accurate tracking of damaged bins. Many of them were still under warranty and could be returned for repair or replacement, thus avoiding expenditure on new bins. A key benefit came in having visibility of bins in transport, thus helping to better predict bin availability and reduce concerns about potential shortfalls in supply.
“You can control your system,” O’Boyle emphasized in conclusion. “Don’t let your system control you. Put a little effort into it and I think you’ll be able to find that you’ll be able to reduce your pool. You’ll be able to reduce the costs associated with managing them. And if you use expendable packaging you will be able to lower your expense.”
Pros and Cons of RFID on Fresh Produce Packaging
Implementation of radio frequency identification technology isn’t as simple as just slapping an RFID tag on a shipping case or pallet. Several variables come into play. First you should make a list.
For example, how much data do you want to include in the tag? Do you want active (battery-operated) or passive (unpowered) tags? Do you want basic electronic product codes (EPCs) that facilitate inventory tracking? Or do you also want higher-cost, sensor-embedded technology that monitors temperature and humidity and signals tampering when a case or pallet is breached by an unauthorized person?
What is the density of your product? How much metal or water is contained in the product or package? These factors can affect tag readability. Finally, how much are you willing/able to pay for this technology, and how much time and staff are you prepared to dedicate to its implementation?
Counting the cost
“RFID will fundamentally change supply chain management and the way industry tracks, traces and manages the products that are delivered to retailers and consumers,” says Sujeet Chand, chief technology officer of Rockwell Automation (www.rockwellautomation.com/rfid), Milwaukee. But it won’t come easily or cheaply … at least not yet.
According to some estimates, it can cost conservatively in the $75,000 range to set up an RFID tagging system for one low-capacity casing line that meets minimal RFID mandates. Then you have to add in the cost of the tags themselves — approximately 40-50 cents per passive tag, depending on volume purchased and the amount of information embedded in the tags. For active tags integrated with truck-transport GPS, the cost might run around $10 per tag.
Obviously, RFID can be an expensive proposition. But on the upside, you can give your products an added market-access advantage, decrease the opportunity for theft, enhance product inventory tracking, and quickly retrieve problem products or block their distribution, avoiding recalls.
“The general cost of the technology will not be any different for the food industry, but the issues of unfriendly items [containing metal or water] could prove more costly,” says Steve Dean, director of business development at Franwell Inc. (www.franwell.com), a Plant City, Fla., engineering firm specializing in software for manufacturing, shipping, distribution and logistics. The company has formed an R&D alliance with the Center for Food Distribution & Retailing to study RFID. “Part of our work with CFDR is to help solve this cost issue for current and future food industry users.”
The University of Florida (Gainesville) is home to the Center for Food Distribution and Retailing, an academic-industry collaboration that has 25 faculty members working on all aspects of food distribution from fields to store shelves. RFID is the hot research topic now, with the center focusing on requirements for the use and reading of RFID tags in the food supply chain.
The primary R&D objective is to explore and evaluate the software and hardware designs needed by the food industry to achieve optimum implementation and effectiveness of RFID systems.
Especially for perishable food products, “RFID tags can enhance temperature management and quality control, optimizing food distribution and food safety conditions and averting potential product losses and the associated costs,” says Jean Pierre Emond, co-director of the center and associate professor of packaging science at the university. “In the near future, equipment interacting with these tagged products will become even smarter, responding to highly specific product safety needs. The CFDR already is working with equipment manufacturers to accomplish that goal.”
CFDR has an advisory board with presidents or vice presidents of retail, foodservice and restaurant chains from around the world. These members have helped the center conduct RFID tests on their operations.
Also, the center has projects under way with fresh produce packagers Tanimura & Antle and Fresh Express, both based in Salinas, Calif., and Beaver Street Fisheries, a frozen seafood company headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla.
Franwell has helped the CFDR establish a state-of-the-art RFID laboratory — one of the largest in the country focusing on RFID issues related to food distribution. Franwell is particularly involved with integrating RFID into packaging and is using research at the center to address “issues related to products that are not RFID-friendly, especially products containing water and metal. Water and metal play a major role in all fresh food and beverage products. But it becomes a challenge to read an entire pallet of [such] products without scanning each case one by one.”
Says Emond, “We can work around the problem of product density and composition by changing the package shape, changing the air space in the package, or changing the tag position and orientation. Product temperature also is an important factor. The colder the product, the easier tag reading becomes. Frozen products absorb less radio waves.
“But other factors affect the readability,” Emond continues, “such as forklift handling, vibrations and impacts during transport and retailers’ warehouse practices. So, achieving consistent, reliable tag readability is really a product-by-product puzzle, requiring custom solutions.”
Emond emphasizes, “We have to give credit to Tanimura & Antle, Fresh Express, and Beaver Street Fisheries for their RFID initiatives. All three of these companies have given significant amounts of their time to developing the knowledge required to achieve successful RFID. And the two-way partnerships we have with these companies provide us with valuable input.”
Rockwell has established its own RFID test lab at its headquarters in Milwaukee. It creates a simulated factory environment to allow accurate testing and evaluation of a wide variety of RFID products. Products from Alien Technology, ConnecTerra, FKI Logistex, SAMSys Technologies and Zebra Technologies already are installed there.
Many food companies are hoping to realize a good return on investment by taking a cautious, minimalist approach to RFID implementation. The prevailing mood seems to be: “First, let’s make sure it works.”
Adhering to standards
RFID technology is in the process of emerging and evolving, and so are the standards surrounding its use. Consequently, many food companies feel as if they are trying to hit a moving target.
Wal-Mart is spearheading this technology. The large supermarket chain Albertson’s also recently came on board the RFID technology train. Mass adoption across the retailer universe is inevitable at some point. As a result, food companies realize they can’t afford to fall behind the curve.
“Your company wants to maintain mega-retailer business by participating in their RFID program – coding pallets and cases for data collection and tracking,” says a spokesman for Omron Electronics LLC (www.omron.com/oei), Schaumburg, Ill. “But other compelling business growth issues make RFID much more useful than just meeting mandates from large retailers.” He listed these collateral benefits as improving your agility to manufacture a wider variety of products; delivering seasonal and regional product cost-effectively and on-time; and reducing waste from misdirected shipments.
Food manufacturers fully understand the product traceability and inventory control benefits that RFID can offer. But compliance has significant cost implications for the food industry. So, food processors/packagers are taking a cautious approach, especially in the face of continually changing and developing standards.
Dean explains that EPCglobal (www.epcglobalinc.org), a joint venture between EAN International and the Uniform Code Council Inc., is charged with setting the standards for tags, which will control what and how much data is in each tag. “The U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD) has been very aggressive in its use of RFID and recently finalized its policy, as have some major retailers like Wal-Mart,” he says. “We believe the Dept. of Agriculture could and maybe should be involved from a traceability and food safety perspective while these standards are in the development cycle.”
As mentioned before, Tanimura & Antle has been working with CFDR on testing of tags and readers. According to Tom Casas, vice president of information technology, T&A is prepared to go active with RFID this month (thereby meeting Wal-Mart’s supplier implementation deadline), for wrapped head lettuce packed in returnable plastic containers. The wrapped lettuce heads are packed 24 per container, 40 containers per pallet.
“We are starting off small. We will add cauliflower, broccoli and celery after the lettuce launch,” Casas says. “RFID is costly, but it gives us more sophisticated traceability. We manually apply the tags in the field at the case level. So, when cases get shifted from one pallet to another, we can still track them very closely.”
Based on tests done at CFDR, T&A chose two reading systems — from Matrics (www.matrics.com), Rockville, Md., and from Alien Technology (www.alientechnology.com), Morgan Hill, Calif. Both systems incorporate chips and antennae and execute good reads on tagged products with water content.
“RFID is costing us about 50 cents per case tag. That quickly adds up for high volumes of relatively low-cost items like heads of lettuce,” Casas comments. “But we believe the benefits in terms of food safety and traceability and market access will offset that cost in the long run. To some degree, implementing RFID is a leap of faith. We have to trust our marketing instincts and our technology partners.”
Franwell’s Dean adds, “We as an industry must use partnering and collaboration as the means to solve the many issues facing the wide-spread adoption of RFID. It’s a big job requiring cooperative efforts to get it done right.”
Active vs passive RFID tags
One of the first decisions for any food processor is deciding between passive or active RFID tagging. The choice is affected by both functional requirements of particular food products (for example, close real-time temperature monitoring) and budgetary realties confronting the food companies.
Current passive tag technology has some limitations in terms of readability and durability. But active tags are more expensive.
So why not a little of both? One company championing hybrid implementation of passive tags, active tags and other forms of auto-ID is RF Code Inc. (www.rfcode.com), Mesa, Ariz. The company is the developer and supplier of Tavis data management software platforms and Mantis active RFID tags and readers.
“Cumulatively measured, passive RFID is quite limited in its physical durability,” says president Armando Viteri. “To get effective range, these tags are quite large, thus making them a very big target for the tines of a fork lift. Passive labels are better suited for case-level applications.”
RF Code has been pioneering the integration of tracking technologies to optimize their combined performance in the supply chain. One successful project involved placing active RFID tags on intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) filled with products such as industrial food ingredients, and then reinforcing that tracking method with global positioning systems (GPS) on transport trucks. UK-based IBC rental company pH Europe began using this system to transport and track an array of products in the summer of 2004, and has been honored with several European supply chain and information management awards for the innovation.
“There are four key elements of RFID: the tags themselves, tag readers, data monitoring/collection systems, and business applications software,” says Royanna Chappell, vice president of emerging applications at RedPrairie Corp. (www.redprairie.com), a Waukesha, Wis., RFID system architect. “To successfully implement RFID, users need to evaluate how all these technology elements integrate and operate across their entire corporate network and information sharing systems. It’s a mistake to get too focused on one element at the expense of the other three.”
RedPrairie works with food and beverage companies building custom RFID solutions to meet the needs of a range of clients, including processors of breakfast cereals, snack foods, spreads and drink products. The integrator then works with various wireless data collection system suppliers (such as RF Code) and labeling systems suppliers (such as Avery Dennison).
Chappell also points out users need to determine what and how much data they want to encode on the tags, in addition to EPC elements. “Right now, the options are 64-bit or 96-bit tags, but in the future 256-bit tags will be available,” she says. “Regardless of the tagging solution selected, for the foreseeable future, bar codes will continue to play a significant role, working in tandem with RFID tags.
“The industry is on a learning curve about RFID technology,” she continues. “Companies are still seeking greater understanding regarding the benefits and pitfalls. This learning curve is going to continue through 2005 and 2006. Widespread, real-world knowledge about the application of RFID in the food industry and other industries probably won’t mature and solidify until 2007 or 2008. New technologies do not come without certain complications.”
There has never, of course, been a time when product security was not important, but in today’s globalized marketplace – with all the factors that come into play – ensuring traceability along the supply chain is a more complicated, and yet vital, process than ever before. Added to this, there is growing pressure from both consumers and legislators for transparency from producers and suppliers. All of this calls for ever-more sophisticated tracking solutions.
Traceability is a factor in all sectors, but in Europe the focus from a legislative perspective – as laid out in the FMD Directive – is still heavily on prescription pharmaceutical goods.
“The system in the EU only covers prescription medicines,” says Alastair Hanlon, CCO at PragmatIC Semiconductor, “but the level of counterfeiting in OTC medicines and many other market segments is also very high and can also have very damaging outcomes. There are huge potential benefits to extending the system to more product categories. Then there are further opportunities to use the serialization for track and trace from factory to the consumer. While this is not a requirement yet (in the EU or the US), enabling track and trace will need significant investment from all actors in the supply chain.”
As others have already pointed out on this platform, the EU could do worse than follow the example of Russia in this regard. Russia has taken the long view with its trace and trace system, setting up a series of public-private partnerships and rolling it out to include an increasing range of sectors from personal care to food and drink.
“While Russia’s approach is characteristically bold,” says Alastair, “other countries have focused on prescription pharmaceuticals as the first products that require serialization and are likely to build from there. The key lesson from Russia is, whatever products you’re seeking to protect, these systems must be built with scale in mind.”
RFID – ‘An obvious choice for supply chain traceability’
In simple terms, the two most ubiquitous track and trace technologies in use today are barcodes and RFID. In this article, our focus will be on the latter, as, according to Alastair Hanlon, RFID has several advantages over the present barcodes on the market.
“It can be added under the label, so doesn’t require real estate on the package of a minimum size; it’s difficult to copy and doesn’t need line of sight to read. Barcodes can also easily be damaged by wrinkles or over-writing, image defects etc. Large numbers of RFID tagged items can be read in a very short period of time, making stock control/inventory checking very fast and efficient. Couple this with the software and databases that have been developed to manage RFID records, and it is an obvious choice to use this technology for supply chain traceability.”
Certainly, we have by no means exhausted the prospects for RFID and it will continue to have a key role to play within wider systems. “Where RFID’s future importance comes into play is when the technology is implemented as part of a larger infrastructure development,” says Norberto Bermudez, Product Manager Europe at SATO, “whereby the business connects their existing software, such as warehouse management system or enterprise resource planning system, to analyse and monitor real-time data to help prevent downtime or develop new opportunities.”
To improve efficiency and safety further in a wider range of end-use markets, increased functionality including smart temperature or moisture sensors could be incorporated into RFID systems. As Norberto Bermudez points out, extreme changes in temperature during transport can potentially be very dangerous.
“For example, many seafood supply chains are heavily regulated and require unique RFID technology that includes their species name on capture, so they can later be scanned by QR code into a warehouse management system to prevent mislabelling. In the pharmaceutical industry, efficient track and trace systems can help reduce monetary loss by only recalling the faulty product, rather than the entire batch. Serialized items can also be located easily to provide potential life-saving information, such as displaying expiry dates or alerting operators to counterfeiting concerns.”
Then there is near-field communication (NFC) technology – sometimes referred to as the ‘next step up’ from RFID, although the two could perhaps be best described as complementary. RFID and NRC technology can be combined to create a complete experience. It gives brand owners the ability to communicate important information about the product – and its authenticity – directly to the consumer rather than only retailers or distributors etc.
“The main driver for using NFC is that the end consumer has a reader in their pocket – their smartphone,” says Alastair Hanlon. “The reason that the vast majority of modern phones have NFC is because of contactless payment. Android phones have allowed the use of the same NFC for other applications for some time, and we are now seeing Apple allowing the use for things other than ApplePay as well. So using NFC extends the use of embedded electronics all the way through the supply chain right to the customer.”
How can traceability be extended to waste management?
But when we think of track and trace technologies we should not only consider their benefits in terms of security and consumer safety. Less appreciated is the role they can play in building a circular economy. What happens after the consumer has bought the product, and can traceability be extended to addressing the waste stream? After all, some of the biggest circularity challenges we face at the moment are related to inadequacy – or lack of uniformity – in regional recycling and waste infrastructures.
“We have several sustainability projects ongoing, for example using the technology to help track waste to ensure it isn’t fly-tipped; using it to sort waste to maximize the value of that waste and keep it in circulation; or enabling reuse models,” says Alastair Hanlon. “The area we are really excited about is how it can be used to reduce waste – for example by adding sensors and a small amount of compute, it will be possible to ensure that food has been kept in optimum conditions and remove the need for conservative sell-by dates.”
Norberto Bermudez emphasizes the impact mislabelling can have on product waste. “Essentially,” he says, “faulty labelling means the company has to reproduce the item that was mislabelled then re-transport the goods through logistics, thus generating more material waste and energy, increasing their overall carbon footprint. Track and trace technologies can help to combat these errors. For example, in the food industry, items tagged with RFID labels that later need to be recalled due to safety concerns can be individually identified and returned accurately, reducing waste and with minimal impact on carbon footprint. Our CT4-LX label printing solution is ideal for businesses looking to reduce their impact on the environment. Its RFID capabilities provide heightened flexibility for track and trace inventory management, while its increased data collection input delivers re-labelling accuracy.”
We can also expect to see the plastic waste itself being tagged with RFID, to help identify individual materials and make it easier to sort in the waste streams. The SORT-IT project by PragmatIC has been designed to do just that. And finally, we are now seeing RFID technology that is plastic-free by design and easily recyclable. Stora Enso’s ECO™ RFID tag technology that enables paper-based tags are just one case in point, but this is likely just a taste of what is to come.
Where next?
Looking forward, there will be steadily increasing automation of track and trace processes – something that has already been speeded up by the COVID-19 crisis.
“Who could have imagined we could transition so quickly to online in some many aspects of life?” says Alastair. “In the past year we have seen e-commerce explode, e-health catch on, but with more of us using the internet, there are more possibilities for fraud and so traceability from source to consumer, ie. a secure and transparent supply chain, is even more important. In future there will also be more and more AI added to the systems that predict trends, for example to anticipate restocking.”
Many experts also seem to agree that blockchain will have a major role to play in traceability, as in so many things. This can be combined with technologies like the Internet of Things to automate the tracking of production, transport and quality control. It will also allow companies to share their track and trace data with customers – while preserving certain aspects of IP – in order to provide proof of authenticity and ethical supply chains.