RFID Tracks Oil Co. Containers and Ships in Newfoundland

By tagging trucks for the pilot, A. Harvey could then determine if vehicles could be tracked while passing through the marine base when retrieving and carrying containers. IDBlue also placed tags on two ocean vessels so that they could be read while the ships were in port. In that way, the companies tested whether the system could detect a vessel's arrival, not only sending an alert to management that a specific ship had arrived at the port, but also providing a record of that vessel's comings and goings.

Paul Baboian, business development manager for Zebra Enterprise Solutions

Based on the pilot's, success, the full installation—consisting of tagging all containers, along with additional trucks and vessels, for the participating customer, and then eventually tagging the containers and vessels for all of its customers—is now underway, says Jeff Brown, IDBlue's VP of services. "A part of the pilot was to understand whether our gear was rugged enough for the environment," says Paul Baboian, Zebra Enterprise Solutions' business development manager. The pilot, he indicates, found that the tags could, indeed, sustain the harsh sea environment.

Since the pilot ended in June, A. Harvey has begun tagging its 1,400 containers, as well as additional vessels and vehicles. The VSS software will display a map of the marine base and the container depot—and in the case of the marine base, it will also provide the location of the container, tagged vessel or truck within approximately 10 feet. At the container depot, where knowing a container's precise location is less critical since it is not being prepared for loading onto a vessel, readers at the entrance and exit capture the ID number of each container's tag, indicating that container is in the depot, but not providing the exact slip in which it is stored.

Geoff Cunningham, A. Harvey's manager of offshore operations, indicates the system will offer the company visibility of containers at the base, as well as shipment and automated shipment and receipt confirmation for each container as it is loaded onto a vessel and later returned. It will also enable the firm to track the length of time containers remain in holding prior to being shipped, and the time spent offshore. "The system will primarily be used to locate containers more quickly," Cunningham states. "This will confirm location of containers needing certification [approval from government agencies that monitor the safety of goods going to offshore oil rigs] and location of containers to be loaded on vessels, thus decreasing load time of the vessel."

A. Harvey plans to fully integrate the VSS system with the company's current ERP system. Design work for that integration is currently underway, Brown says, with full integration expected to take place in the fall of 2010. Once that has been accomplished, the company will be able to not only track containers, but also link each container's ID with its contents. In this way, the system could be used for invoicing, allowing A. Harvey to generate an invoice for the supplied items once the system indicates the container has been shipped. The solution could also be utilized for inspection management. For example, A. Harvey's staff could use the VSS software to run a search for containers requiring inspection in the coming days, and then receive a listing of those containers, as well as their locations. At that time, vessel tags could be used to confirm which container is loaded onto which ship. The system will be fully deployed with all containers tagged by the end of the year.