RFID embedded pallets help improve Supply chain
The Intelligent Global Planning Systems was established by, the former members of the wooden pallet-pool industry. They will now come out with the first plastic pallets in September. All of these pallets will be RFID enabled. The Orlando, Fla , will then rent this pool of pallets to customers. The pallet pool will allow retailers, distributors and manufacturers to use pallets on a rental basis and then return them to the pool provider for reuse and inspection.
The pallet pool enables the retailers, distributors and manufacturers to use pallet on a rental basis. This pallet pool can then be returned to the pool provider for inspection as well as reuse. The pallets are generally made of wood and do not have RFID tags and need to be tracked manually. The IGPS’ pallets will be equipped with passive ultra high frequency EPC Gen 2 RFID. The process of embedding will be done while the pallet is manufactured. This will help in tracking the pallets from the time they are manufactured to the time they reach the retailer. This would also help in preventing any lost pallet. A plastic pallet costs around $ 50 per piece. A plastic pallet costs 2.5 times a wooden pallet.
IGPS has placed an order of 6 million pallets. Some the pallets ordered will be available by September. Each of the pallets will be encoded with a 915 MHz passive RFID tag. The RFID tags will be provided by RFID system integrator Xterprise. The tags will be encoded with a GRAI serial number as and when the pallet passes down the conveyor belt. Recently IGPS has announced that it has bagged a contract for several million pallets for a Netherlands based company, Schoeller Arca Systems.
Xterprise will also provide its XRAM software sequence, create and encode unique serial numbers for each pallet’s RFID tag during the pallet-manufacturing process. The firm will also provide its Track Asset management Software to manage RFID readers used at the factory. The software will gather the information from the tag data and read it by the interrogators that are installed at the IGPS’s facilities in the United States.
According to IGPS CEO Bob Moore:
RFID tracking allows supply-chain visibility as pallets of a customer’s products move toward the retail shelf. In addition, the tags can be connected to a temperature or shock sensor bolted to the pallet, allowing distributors the security of knowing their product was damaged in transit. In addition RFID tracking enables manufacturers such as pharmaceutical companies to accomplish recalls of a product while it is still in transit, by using the pallet’s RFID number to track where it is in the supply chain.
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