ThyssenKrupp to Use EPC UHF Tags to Track Steel

The tags were attached with adhesive to the middle of the side of each slab at a seaport in Brazil. They contained UPM Raflatac EPC Class 1 Gen 2 RFID inlays, which operate at 860 to 950 MHz, so that they will work in all countries where ThyssenKrupp Steel does business. Tags are encoded with a 10-digit unique ID (part of the EPC number) linked in ThyssenKrupp Steel's IT system to information on the slab's steel grade, dimensions, customer and destination.

At present, such information is tracked manually, and slabs are marked with a 10-digit number sprayed with heat-resistant aluminum ink. The partners chose EPC inlays because of their global availability and competitive pricing. They also wanted to keep the option of possibly using EPCglobal's software-based EPCIS standard for systems used to store and share tag-related data.

"Today slabs are only used internally for production of coils and other end products, but in the future they may also be traded with other steel companies or even end customers," Feinbier says. "Therefore, the exchange of information via EPCIS might be a future scenario."

Once the application is up and running, slabs will be identified about seven times during their journey from Brazil to the German processing plants. In the pilot project, the steelmaker interrogated the slabs when they were tagged at the Brazilian seaport and when they were unloaded off the ocean vessels at the European seaport. A third interrogation came when the slabs were cleared from river barges at ThyssenKrupp Steel's Rhine River harbor in Duisburg-Walsum, Germany.

Up until this point, handheld readers made by Psion Teklogix were in use. But in Duisburg-Walsum, ThyssenKrupp Steel tested several RFID readers mounted on a crane used to hoist the slabs off of the ship and onto barges and railcars. The readers, made by Alien Technology, interrogated slabs while they were suspended about 3 meters aboveground. The system then tells the crane operator where to place the slab. Once the system is fully implemented, fixed crane readers will be used at each point and handhelds will be used as backups in case a tag is damaged and a new one needs to be applied and encoded.