ThyssenKrupp to Use EPC UHF Tags to Track Steel

Because of high fees for landing and docking ships at European harbors and a limited number of cranes to unload the ships, the company must limit the time it takes workers to unload to a maximum of three minutes per slab. By quickly identifying the slabs, RFID helped speed the process of determining which slabs go on which barges and railcars. Part of the steel was taken to ThyssenKrupp Steel's hot rolling mill in Bochum, and other slabs go up the Rhine to the plant in Duisburg-Walsum.

The last interrogation happened with fixed RFID readers along the production line before the slab was sent into the reheating furnace to be rolled into a coil. The partners may also identify further interrogation points at other destination sites.

Before the pilot began in October, tags were tested to make sure they would be readable after going through harsh conditions during transit, such as being washed with seawater and exposed to temperature changes, snow, ice, bumps and knocks. Bar-code labels were ruled out as a method of tracking the slabs since ice, dirt or salt buildup could hinder the ability to scan the bar code to identify the slab, and time was short for moving the slabs around.

"The lack of time means that manual tracking of the slabs simply isn't possible," Thiel says.

Feinbier explains: "There are further reasons why bar codes were ruled out: strong sunlight could lighten the black-white contrast necessary for bar codes to be read, and we wanted to identify moving objects. There are no auto-focusing bar-code readers that can reliably read over distances of several meters under these conditions."

Read rates in the pilot were "highly satisfactory, although not 100 percent." The company was so pleased with the results that it decided in March to move ahead with the project and announce the pilot to the public. Currently, ThyssenKrupp Steel is integrating the RFID application with its IT systems, Thiel says.

"This entire project is not about optimizing an existing process, as there is no steel plant in Brazil to date," Feinbier says. "It's all about creating the new processes in the best possible way." ThyssenKrupp Steel declines to say how much it is investing in the project.