Tetas Textiles Tracks Deliveries

At the launch of the implementation, Tetas had been tagging pallets with two RFID tags apiece—but Yaffe says that actually complicated the system. "We found that the more tags you have, the more complicated and error-prone the system can be," he explains. For this reason, he says, the company now applies only one RFID tag per pallet, and it has fine-tuned the system to achieve 99 percent read rates.

The Tetas group of companies includes two that produce apparel for export, and one that manufactures textile and packaging labels, as well as stationary. Tetas employs RFID to track paper reels that it supplies to commercial printers. The reels measure 100 centimeters (39 inches) in diameter and 64 centimeter (25 inches) tall, and weigh 673 kilograms (1,481 pounds) each.

Moris Yaffe, Tetas' general manager

The company usually identifies the rolls via their bar-code labels, and assigns the rolls to specific pallets fitted with EPC Gen 2 RFID tags. In some cases, however, the firm attaches EPC Gen 2 RFID tags to the actual rolls, since it must track specific details about the paper, such as its quality and weight. Given the rolls' extreme weight and size, as well as how they are stored in high racks, RFID proved to be an ideal way to identify the goods. Workers can approach shelves full of rolls, read each roll's RFID tag with a handheld interrogator and determine the product details immediately, without having to search for a bar code.

In yet another RFID project, Tetas designed an RFID-based system to improve the visitor experience at trade shows, and to collect customer information. The system, named IZ-TAN-BUL—which, Yaffe explains, translates roughly to "trace, recognize and locate"—relies on active and passive RFID tags. Salespeople working at Tetas' booth wear active Wi-Fi tags so their movements can be tracked over a Wi-Fi network. Customers that visit Tetas' booth are assigned EPC Gen 2 UHF tags that are used for identification, as well as for purchasing drinks through an RFID-enabled soda machine that demonstrates RFID in an entertaining and thirst-quenching manner. RFID interrogators installed at various sections of the booth read the customers' tags as they come into range. By interpreting the data, the company can find out which customers browsed which part of its booth the longest, and also track the number of visitors.

Given Tetas' wide experience with various RFID technologies and systems, the Turkish government and private companies have encouraged the firm to provide RFID technology to other companies and industries as well. To that end, Tetas is developing a yard-management system for a car importer based on RFID, bar-code, GPS and GPRS technologies. The system is expected to be finished soon, and will eventually be available on the market.