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Finnish Railroad Streamlines Operations
VR Group is using EPC Gen 2 RFID technology to track 10,000 freight wagons, locomotives and passenger cars, helping the company to manage rail cars and work processes within its rail yards.
By Rhea Wessel
July 14, 2011—Finnish state-owned railroad operator VR Group and its VR Transpoint subsidiary, Finland's largest logistics services provider, are employing EPC Gen 2 RFID technology to track 10,000 rail-freight wagons, locomotives and passenger cars, thereby helping the company and its subsidiary to manage rail cars and work processes within its rail yards.
VR Group implemented radio frequency identification to improve the efficiency of its rail-yard processes, better manage rail-car inventory and maintenance orders, and provide improved customer service—for instance, by delivering detailed information to customers regarding which shipments have arrived, and when.
Mikko Särkkä, VR Group's head of logistics IT, believes the application is the world's first full-scale implementation of an EPC Gen 2 RFID system in the rail industry. The solution relies on Confidex's Ironside tags, protected by plastic housings measuring 8 millimeters (0.3 inch) think, that are read by 350 Psion Workabout Pro handheld readers. The system is currently operational at 50 locations throughout Finland. VR Group invested roughly €2 million ($2.8 million) in the project, for hardware, software and consulting.
VR Group attached two tags to each rail car on both sides, complying with the technical specification regarding interoperability for telematic applications for freight (TAF/TSI), as regulated by the European Railway Agency (ERA).
One advantage of the RFID system, Särkkä says, is that VR Transpoint personnel can now identify wagons automatically, and at a distance, by using the handheld readers—workers can walk alongside a train and use the devices to interrogate each rail car's tags. As they do so, the wagons are identified and the information is automatically transferred to the logistics system. If, for instance, a train car is slated to be removed from one train and shifted to another, this information will be displayed on the employee's screen. Likewise, after wagons have been shifted and a new train has been assembled in the yard, workers can confirm that the cars are located behind the correct locomotive, and in the intended order.
Prior to VR Transpoint's adoption of the RFID system, this process involved manually using pen and paper, and took much longer to notify customers about which cars had arrived, as well as each wagon's position on the train (for example, first, third or fifth).
Such information is vital for the companies receiving the goods, so that they can know whether a particular rail car will arrive with the front end or the back end facing forward (since cars can be connected on a train in either orientation). Since each of a car's two RFID tags is encoded with a bit of data to indicate whether that tag was installed on the car's left or right side, the system knows the direction in which each car is being pulled—that is, whether it is facing forward or backward.
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July 14, 2011—Finnish state-owned railroad operator VR Group and its VR Transpoint subsidiary, Finland's largest logistics services provider, are employing EPC Gen 2 RFID technology to track 10,000 rail-freight wagons, locomotives and passenger cars, thereby helping the company and its subsidiary to manage rail cars and work processes within its rail yards.
VR Group implemented radio frequency identification to improve the efficiency of its rail-yard processes, better manage rail-car inventory and maintenance orders, and provide improved customer service—for instance, by delivering detailed information to customers regarding which shipments have arrived, and when.
|
| VR workers use Psion Workabout Pro handhelds to read the cars' RFID tags. |
Mikko Särkkä, VR Group's head of logistics IT, believes the application is the world's first full-scale implementation of an EPC Gen 2 RFID system in the rail industry. The solution relies on Confidex's Ironside tags, protected by plastic housings measuring 8 millimeters (0.3 inch) think, that are read by 350 Psion Workabout Pro handheld readers. The system is currently operational at 50 locations throughout Finland. VR Group invested roughly €2 million ($2.8 million) in the project, for hardware, software and consulting.
VR Group attached two tags to each rail car on both sides, complying with the technical specification regarding interoperability for telematic applications for freight (TAF/TSI), as regulated by the European Railway Agency (ERA).
|
| Each rail car was fitted with two Confidex Ironside passive RFID tags. |
Prior to VR Transpoint's adoption of the RFID system, this process involved manually using pen and paper, and took much longer to notify customers about which cars had arrived, as well as each wagon's position on the train (for example, first, third or fifth).
Such information is vital for the companies receiving the goods, so that they can know whether a particular rail car will arrive with the front end or the back end facing forward (since cars can be connected on a train in either orientation). Since each of a car's two RFID tags is encoded with a bit of data to indicate whether that tag was installed on the car's left or right side, the system knows the direction in which each car is being pulled—that is, whether it is facing forward or backward.
