DHL Says Its SmartTrucks Save Money, Time and CO2

The express delivery business has also changed in the past two to three years, Paul noted, which has contributed to the problems involved in reading the tags properly. He described seeing flat-screen televisions and full cases of beer' moving through DHL's sorting depots and going into the delivery vehicles. Beer and other products containing water absorb RF signals, while TVs and other objects with a lot of metal components reflect RF signals. Therefore, Paul said, large packages containing water or metal can create a shadow that disrupts a tag's signal, making it difficult to identify packages within a van.

DHL is optimistic the issue can be resolved, and is presently working to fix the problem, in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute, a contract research organization in Magdeburg, Germany, that is partially government-sponsored.

"Anything far under 100 percent read rates is hard to sell" as a business case to DHL's top executives, Paul stated. "Once we get there, there's a business case for the technology, at the very least in our depots."

Although Paul could not name a timetable for a wider deployment of RFID aboard DHL's trucks, he said the company is evaluating the technology for a number of purposes related to its package delivery business. Once deployed, RFID tags could replace the practice of employing bar-coded labels and scanners to track packages and streamline operations, both in parcel-handling hubs and for delivery drivers, who would then be spared multiple bar-code scans of packages.

As part of the follow-on project to improve the reader's performance, DHL also plans to test a "pick by light" system that integrates with a vehicle's onboard computer, identifying which packages will be delivered at the driver's next stop. The system will utilize RFID to locate a particular package on a van's shelf, and lights installed at regular intervals on those shelves will guide the driver to the correct item, thus hastening the delivery process and reducing driver errors. The company is working with multiple vendors to develop the system, Paul said.

According to Paul, Deutsche Post DHL hopes its SmartTruck initiative will help it achieve its goal, set in April 2008, of improving the CO2 efficiency of its operations by 10 percent by 2012, and by 30 percent by 2020.