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RFID boosts supply chain management

Michelle Avenant
By Michelle Avenant, portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 30 Mar 2015

More can be done with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve the efficiency and visibility of goods in the supply chain.

So says professor Johann Holm of the School for Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at North West University (NWU)'s Potchefstroom campus.

"Currently, [the goods transit industry] uses GPS to track vehicles carrying goods, but the goods are not always electronically linked to the vehicles - and that's the missing part," he says.

There are many ways RFID tags can be used, and different tags are available for different purposes, says Holm.

He explains that passive RFID tags, which carry static information, can be attached to each container of goods, containing details of the quantity and quality of the goods at the beginning of their journey, as well as their time of departure and expected time of arrival.

Active RFID tags, which are trackable from great distances and can relay changing information, can be used to monitor the temperature and humidity of the container, which may account for a change in the goods' quality along their journey, he continues.

Security tags can also be used to indicate whether a container's seal has been tampered with, he adds.

Holm believes the increased and diversified implementation of RFID technology can greatly reduce transit fraud and improve accountability monitoring within the supply chain, particularly for industries relying on the international transit of valuable items, such as cigarettes.

Similar use of RFID could also benefit manufacturing industries in which products are compiled from a variety of different parts, such as the motor industry, he adds.

An electrical engineering team at NWU is currently working towards implementing RFID technology to improve the efficiency and information supply of transit systems within SA and elsewhere in Africa.

"I think the major development for the project lies with the development of a centralised management system that must be put in place and interfaced with existing systems," says Holm.

NWU is working with a number of industry partners, such as the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral), on pilot systems for the broader project, says professor Alwyn Hoffman of NWU's School for Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering.

RFID readers are being installed at Sanral overload control centres (OCCs) to detect passing heavy vehicles that have been tagged, Hoffman continues.

"We hope to demonstrate that the overload control process can be improved by sharing information between OCCs in order to make more intelligent decisions, among others to reduce the number of times the same vehicle will be weighed during the same trip." Hoffman adds the information collected will be shared with other transporters, allowing them to manage their own operations more effectively.

"In another complementary project, we are tracking the vehicles of individual transporters through the entire value chain from where an order has been placed until it has been delivered," says Hoffman. The team studies data such as turn-around time and fuel consumption to establish performance benchmarks and thus monitor a vehicle's deviation from the benchmark, he explains.

As different concepts are proven in practice, the project's implementation will be considered on a per-partner basis, Hoffman concludes.

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