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Dutch Horticultural Company Sends Flowers via RFID
Atos Origin has provided integration for the new system using GlobeRanger's iMotion edgeware platform. This captures the location data of flowers in moving trolleys, providing information to potential customers at auction time, such as the type of flowers on a particular trolley, how they've been in cold storage and how long they were at the dock door. The iMotion software integrates with FloraHolland's Microsoft-based Axapta ERP software system. "The data that is collected concerns the time and location of flower batches traveling through the auction process from dock to cooling area, and from distribution to indoor delivery," Multem says.
With the new system in place, FloraHolland employees will check in the flowers delivered each morning using a touch-screen computer at the dock door, then give the flowers a grade rating based on freshness and quality. They will also manually input the ID number of the RFID tag on the trolley on which the flowers will be loaded. Train drivers wear ID badges with TI's 134.2 KHz passive RFID tags. As a driver passes from one location to another, readers deployed around the facility will capture the driver and trolley number, says Bob DiLoreto, vice president of business development for GlobeRanger. The system will then send that data to the FloraHolland database.
FloraHolland is in the processing of installing 67 readers from DLTech RFID Solutions at choke points on the auction floor, and is also acquiring 250 handheld readers. The company expects installation to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2007.
The new solution will gather more real-time tracking and tracing information between the start and end points of the delivery process, says Multem, with the use of iMotion software collecting and interpreting data specific to the time every trolley passes over each choke point. It will determine the direction of trolleys and their drivers by tracking where the previous RFID read took place. This feature will allow FloraHolland and its customers to know how long the flowers remained in any specific part of the facility—such as in cold storage, at a dock door or waiting to enter the auction floor—thereby guaranteeing customers as to the freshness of the flowers.
"This data enables improvement of internal processes by real time-correction," Multem says. Such real-time correction, for instance, might involve alerting employees when a trolley is delayed outside of cold storage. It also provides the platform for analysis of data for improvements in the logistic process. He adds that it will eventually enable an electronic "processing history" of the flowers, to confirm they have been handled properly to potential buyers.
Down the line, Multem says, "FloraHolland has a number of other smaller sites which could be also part of a rollout in the future."
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With the new system in place, FloraHolland employees will check in the flowers delivered each morning using a touch-screen computer at the dock door, then give the flowers a grade rating based on freshness and quality. They will also manually input the ID number of the RFID tag on the trolley on which the flowers will be loaded. Train drivers wear ID badges with TI's 134.2 KHz passive RFID tags. As a driver passes from one location to another, readers deployed around the facility will capture the driver and trolley number, says Bob DiLoreto, vice president of business development for GlobeRanger. The system will then send that data to the FloraHolland database.
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| Wilrie Multem |
The new solution will gather more real-time tracking and tracing information between the start and end points of the delivery process, says Multem, with the use of iMotion software collecting and interpreting data specific to the time every trolley passes over each choke point. It will determine the direction of trolleys and their drivers by tracking where the previous RFID read took place. This feature will allow FloraHolland and its customers to know how long the flowers remained in any specific part of the facility—such as in cold storage, at a dock door or waiting to enter the auction floor—thereby guaranteeing customers as to the freshness of the flowers.
"This data enables improvement of internal processes by real time-correction," Multem says. Such real-time correction, for instance, might involve alerting employees when a trolley is delayed outside of cold storage. It also provides the platform for analysis of data for improvements in the logistic process. He adds that it will eventually enable an electronic "processing history" of the flowers, to confirm they have been handled properly to potential buyers.
Down the line, Multem says, "FloraHolland has a number of other smaller sites which could be also part of a rollout in the future."
