Dec 28, 2010The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML), a state- and private-funded research institute in Dortmund, Germany, is working with Rewe-Informations-Systeme (the IT arm of German food retailer Rewe), Mars Deutschland (the German division of food manufacturer Mars) and CHEP Deutschland (the German division of global pallet-pool service provider CHEP) to develop a system that will move goods through supply chains in an automated fashion, with higher data transparency and fewer failures.
Through what the partners call the smaRTI project, the group seeks to drastically simplify the implementation of smart reusable transport items (RTIs), says Björn Anderseck, Fraunhofer IML's project manager for smaRTI, by creating standard transponders for three different types of shipment carriers, as well as a standard IT architecture and services that can be used throughout entire supply chains. In so doing, he indicates, they will pave the way for the implementation of self-guided logistics systems.
The hope, Anderseck says, is that the system will save time and money for supply chain participants through better automation of the flow of goods, and by enabling services such as real-time tracking to make supply chains more transparent and flexible, as well as less error-prone. The tagging of carriers will also help carrier owners better manage their inventories worldwide.
"Every supply chain partner," Anderseck explains, "would know the exact location of the goods, in which process step they are, and if the goods are in the front store or in the back room."
As part of smaRTI, the researchers and their partners are designing hardware and software for carriers used by three large German companies in three separate industries. These consist of pallets utilized by Rewe to transports goods sold in its stores, containers for transporting letters within Deutsche Post's German network and energy-efficient, intelligent air-freight pallets for Lufthansa Cargo.
All three carrier types will employ RFID tags and readers for identification, as well as other forms of automatic-identification technologies, such as bar codes or GPS, for example. The project members are currently working to define which tags and interrogators will be used on which carriers.
In each case, carriers will be self-guided through the supply chain, since data pertaining to each carrier will be stored on the RFID chip itself, instead of in a central database. The information saved on the chips will indicate such things as where a particular carrier is headed, to whom it belongs and what it is carrying.
The smaRTI project was awarded funding by Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The entire project will involve an investment of €8.4 million ($10.9 million) from the companies involved, as well as from the government, and is expected to last three and a half years.
SmartRTI is part of a larger project supporting research into logistics in the Ruhr region, and is designed to create jobs in that area of Germany. The so-called Efficiency Cluster LogistikRuhr involves 120 businesses and 11 research institutes, and will be funded for five years with up to €40 million ($52 million) for a variety of logistics-related projects.
For the smaRTI sub-project involving RFID-based pallets for food retailing, Fraunhofer IML, Mars and CHEP are developing an "intelligent" euro pallet and quarter pallet for retail displays. The firms are currently in the hardware-selection phase.
"Mars and Rewe will be able to measure the effectiveness of its displays on the store floor much more efficiently with tagged display pallets," Anderseck states, "because it will always know if a display is on the floor or in the store's back room."
At the same time, researchers are beginning the process of defining the requirements of software to combine all logistics data from all supply chain participants.
For the project planned with Lufthansa, Fraunhofer IML and its partners will focus on determining if RFID tags can be created that are sufficiently small, and that can be used together with the aluminum cargo palettes that Lufthansa uses worldwide. Prototypes are planned for 2011.
The Deutsche Post project partners will work to create an RFID transponder for plastic containers used for carrying mail. The transponder is to fit inside the soft plastic sleeves already attached to the company's containers, which now hold slips of paper printed with text describing such details as the container's contents or destination. The transponder is intended to function not only as an RFID tag, but also as a bistatic LCD-like display, whereby information written to that transponder can remain visible without electrical power. In 2007, Deutsche Post and the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF) developed a prototype of such a transponder (see DHL to Market RFID-enabled Smart Box).
"This will mean the end of manual tracking of Deutsche Post containers," Anderseck says, "and the end of little slips of paper."
Infineon Technologies will help by developing dual-frequency transponders that combine ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) and high-frequency (HF) RFID technologies, and that can be utilized with the bistatic displays and be read with NFC-enabled mobile phones.
According to Anderseck, the project partners will potentially seek patents from the research so that they can take the technology commercial. What's more, he says, they want to be the first to use the technology to get an edge on their competitors.
