Monroe Americana Tracks Reusable Containers

Mar 30, 2011By employing an RFID system with tags applied to its reusable containers, Argentinean medicine wholesaler Monroe Americana has increased its efficiency and reduced the number of containers that end up missing. The system, provided by RFID solutions company BDEV provides the firm with visibility into the number of empty containers that are returned from each pharmacy, and also frees up employees who previously had spent hours each day counting containers unloaded from trucks.

Monroe Americana, Argentina's second largest pharmaceutical wholesaler, delivers drugs and personal-care products to 5,000 pharmacies nationwide, as well as 1,500 in the Buenos Aires area alone, with a fleet of approximately 50 trucks. The vehicles transport products in two daily deliveries, six days per week.

To meet high-volume demand, the company utilizes an automatic picking system, says Jorge Zambrano, Monroe Americana's head of logistics and distribution. Products are placed in plastic returnable containers known as pharmaboxes, which are transported throughout the warehouse on conveyor belts, while dispensing modules fill the containers with the products needed for a particular order. The plastic pharmaboxes are available in two form factors: the chico, which measures 10 centimeters by 43 centimeters by 25 centimeters (3.9 inches by 16.9 inches by 9.8 inches), and the grande, measuring 20 centimeters by 42 centimeters by 24 centimeters (7.9 inches by 16.5 inches by 9.4 inches). The use of pharmaboxes traveling on conveyors makes the automated process possible, while without them, the staff would need to manually fill plastic bags with product.

The challenge for Monroe Americana was that pharmaboxes did not always return after being shipped out of the warehouse with an order. "The recovery rate was far below the expected level," says Santiago Spector Mentasti, BDEV's general manager. "The primary goal was to detect the ones that had been returned, and by whom, in order to establish returning behaviors of the customers and the transportists [truck drivers]."

Upon returning from deliveries, the trucks bring empty pharmaboxes to the warehouse—typically, 90 boxes per delivery. In the event that pharmaboxes were missing, the company had to purchase replacements, averaging US$7 apiece.

Another concern for the company was the lack of control over the movements of boxes entering the warehouse when they were returned twice daily. A large numbers of boxes might arrive at the receiving area simultaneously, thus making it difficult to track the number of boxes that returned from each vehicle.

The company installed BDEV's RFID solution in January 2011, at its facility in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. The RFID system automates the receipt of empty boxes. The company attached adhesive RFID labels made with Alien Technology ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 passive Squiggle RFID inlays to 25,000 returnable containers. A portal was installed at one of the dock doors, wired to a touch-screen terminal, as well as to an Alien ALR-9900+ fixed RFID reader and a separate Zebra Technologies printer used for printing paper receipts.

As each truck arrives with empty containers, the driver exits the vehicle and steps up to the touch-screen terminal at the dock door, then taps his contactless access-control card against a high-frequency (HF) reader built into the terminal and enters his password to identify himself. The ID number on the access card, linked to the driver and his route, is stored in the BDEV software. The software transmits instructions on the touch screen directing that driver to unload containers through a dock-door RFID portal, and into a yellow area painted on the floor. As the containers pass through the portal, an ALR-9900+ reader captures the unique ID of each container's tag, and forwards that information to the BDEV software, which then compares the total quantity of boxes against the amount sent to the customers associated with the driver's route. The software also associates each unique ID number with the customer that should have received that container, and can provide a list of IDs unaccounted for.

If the quantity of returned boxes matches that provided to that end user, the return of containers is acknowledged in the software, the driver presses a prompt on the touch screen to approve, and a ticket is printed indicating the quantity of containers delivered. If there is a discrepancy, such as fewer containers returned, a Monroe Americana supervisor will be called, and the system will confirm that specific container IDs are missing, and then print a list of the tag IDs of the missing containers. Each customer prepays for the use of containers, and Monroe Americana then sends an appropriate reimbursement based on the quantity returned.

If the number of containers received matches the amount sent to a customer, but a discrepancy exists in regard to specific unique ID numbers, an alert can be forwarded to the IT department, so that auditors can investigate the issue.

Because the driver is often in a hurry to attend to the next load, he often leaves with one question still unanswered: Is a container missing, or did it merely lose its RFID tag? This question is resolved in the next step. With the reception process complete, the boxes are piled onto a conveyor belt that moves them to two destacker machines, which take the containers from the pile one by one, and send them on another belt to be used in a new order. Each destacker has its own Alien ALR-9900+ reader, and if finds a non-tagged box , the conveyor stops and ejects that box for relabeling.

In the event that the destacker fails to find any untagged containers despite some ID numbers being missing, the BDEV software then sends that data to Monroe Americana's management system, to refund the end user only for the number of pharmaboxes returned.

The new system has increased efficiency by reducing the need to manually count boxes, Zambrano says, while also decreasing the amount of missing containers. However, he notes, it is too early to quantify the benefits.

The next phase of the project will be used during rush hour (the two times each day in which containers loaded with product are prepared for shipment) at the dock staging of Monroe Americana's plant, when staff members need to quickly differentiate one pile of containers from another prior to loading them onto trucks. If multiple containers are piled near the dock door, an individual can walk among them and use handhelds to read their tag IDs, in order to determine which containers are located where. Another purpose of the handheld reader is to aid truck drivers as they retrieve empty containers at a pharmacy. In this case, drivers could read the tag ID numbers while loading the empty containers onto their trucks, thereby creating a record of what was picked up before they leave the customer's location. In either use case, workers will utilize two CS101 handheld readers from Convergence Systems Limited (CSL), running BDEV software to read the pharmaboxes' tags. Data from the handheld readers can either be sent to the back-end software via a Wi-Fi connection, or be uploaded at a docking station on a PC.

"After consulting with other companies in the (RFID) industry and analyzing their products," Zambrano states, "we decided that BDEV's experience in RFID made this the best solution." Since the system has been in place for two months, he adds, "We are convinced that RFID works perfectly." Based on the reduction in missing containers and the decrease in labor hours spent counting the boxes, he estimates that Monroe Americana will recoup its investment within 18 months.