Slate Maker Adopts System to Track Products, Even When Buried Under Snow

The pallets pass down a conveyor to a scale, where they are weighed (based on the weight, the company can deduce the total meters of tiles on each pallet) and then moved to an Intermec RFID reader portal, which captures each tag's unique ID number and links the pallets with the order and the product's weight in the ACT software. An RFID tag with an order number printed on the front is then attached to stretch wrap on the side of the pallet's product. "The stretch wrap tag provides redundancy in the event the tag placed on the pallet is unreadable," Evanger explains, "as well as offering printed data the customers can read."

Jan Erik Evanger, ACT System Skandinavia's managing director

Each of the two forklifts that deliver the pallet to the yard for storage is equipped with a GPS system, as well as an RFID reader. When a forklift picks up the pallet, its interrogator captures the tags' unique ID numbers, and ACT software displays the product information on the forklift's screen. With this data, the driver can confirm that he has the correct pallet. As the driver moves the pallet though the yard, the GPS unit determines the vehicle's location, which the forklift reader unit transmits, along with RFID data, to the back-end system via a wireless 802.11 connection. In that way, the ACT software on Minera's back-end system knows where the specific product is located in real time as the forklift moves around the yard. After putting the product down, the forklift pulls away from the pallet, and the RFID reader on the vehicle no longer receives the unique ID number from the pallet's two RFID tags, thus indicating, in the ACT software, that the pallet has been released. The forklift's location at that time is then saved, in order to indicate the location of the pallet.

Upon later being instructed to pick up a pallet to load onto a truck, a driver can enter the order number for the products he seeks into his onboard RFID/GPS unit, and a screen attached to that unit will then display an icon on a map of the yard, showing where that particular pallet was placed. In addition, the screen displays an icon of the forklift itself, which the driver can use to determine his location in relation to that pallet, and also provides directions that the worker can follow in order to reach that pallet.

The entire system took four weeks to install, Evanger says. The only problems, he notes, have involved a reader antenna being damaged as a forklift is submerged in water, when employees move the vehicle into a river to be washed. The units do not suffer from exposure to water related to rain or snow, he says, but in the future, the company intends to be more careful about how it submerges the forklifts—by lifting the forks on which the device is installed, prior to placing the machines in the river.

According to Evanger, the benefits have been faster location of products and greater accuracy. What's more, he adds, when the product is picked up and loaded onto a truck, a forklift driver can press a prompt on his vehicle's screen to indicate that the product has been shipped, and an advance shipping notice is automatically sent via e-mail to the customer; the invoicing process is then launched, making billing faster and more automatic.