Feb 04, 2020Plastic-processing company Unipac, a subsidiary of Jacto Group—which ended 2018 with a reported net revenue of 1.5 billion Brazilian real ($356 million)—has adopted a combination of UHF RFID and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technologies, together with QR codes. As a result, the company says it has achieved inventory accuracy greater than 98 percent. The Internet of Things (IoT)-based platform was developed by the Center for Innovation in Agribusiness (CIAg), which was responsible for defining the architecture, specifying features based on customer requirements, implementing and validating the solution, providing customer training and maintenance, and developing new features.
Unipac's logistics division, located in the Brazilian municipality of Pompeia, offers collapsible plastic boxes and a portfolio of electric tugs, as well as rental, customization and asset-management services. Before the RFID implementation, the company's asset-management process was manual, involving the reading of barcode labels. The new automated reading process, supported by a digital platform developed by CIAg's technology team, allows employees to efficiently and quickly manage any type of returnable packaging, the company reports.
For Mauro Fernandes, Unipac's commercial director, the impacts of using technology have exceeded expectations. Customer feedback has been positive, he says, thanks to the combination of applied technologies. "Due to the high degree of the solution's acceptance, the growth potential is quite significant," Fernandes states. "At the moment, we are working on projects to apply the returnable packaging management solution to some other customers in the automotive and agricultural industries, with the potential to expand to other markets as well."
Allan Siriani, CIAg's project leader, says the company has long sought a robust solution for the management of returnable packaging, since the alternatives available on the market did not meet all the needs of customers. Understanding the particularities and specific problems of each customer, as well as recognizing that a single technology would not be able to meet all requirements and guarantee the traceability and management of packaging, were key points in developing the solution employed at Unipac.
"Our digital platform allows the application of customizable solutions with the combination of RFID, BLE and QR code technologies, adapted to the needs of each client, ensuring the technical and economic viability of each project," Siriani says. "We believe that the platform can be used by other customers, but it was developed for Unipac, which will work on offering it to the market."
To implement the mixed-architecture IoT platform, a site survey mapped the flow and processes of the operation in order to deploy an infrastructure composed of RFID portals, BLE beacon readers and portable readers, according to the process need, with the goal of seeking a balance between cost and accuracy in obtaining data. The unit receives identifying devices—RFID tags, beacons and QR code tags—and, in a Web-based system, is initialized in its position.
The system's inventory function shows the number of boxes at each location. The maintenance function allows mobile readers to identify any boxes that require repairs in the flow of movement. And the idleness function identifies any boxes not being used in the system.
The solution features a physical infrastructure in which middleware manages all readings and delivers that data to the cloud-based system for the management of the boxes. Among the middleware tasks are identifying a tracked object, assigning a location to this reading and forwarding the results to the database, in which the information is then processed.
With the platform's adoption, the main gains were greater accuracy and agility of readings, the possibility of conducting online inventory counts, optimization of the use of packaging, the ability to provide warnings if time in transit is greater than the established standard, the possibility of identifying the need for corrective and preventive maintenance, a history of movements for packages, and the possibility of remote access. One of the next steps will be to integrate the solution with the company's existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
According to Siriani, the market has long been in need of a complete solution that works in practice and enables the effective management of returnable packaging. Aware of this gap, CIAg sought to unite and apply several complementary skills available at Unipac and Grupo Jacto, enabling the development of a robust solution capable of meeting the required high standards.
The RFID implementation follows GS1's passive EPC UHF standard,. The RFID tags applied to the tracked objects can be detected by any equipment that has been deployed in accordance with this standard. To define reader installation locations, analysis of the operation environment and the flow of returnable packaging were carried out. Readers were installed where they could meet the solution's objectives, and readings can now be taken automatically or manually, depending on need.
One challenge that the project faced was to develop the team's technical knowledge for each of the technologies. Once training was completed, the next goal was to configure the RFID readers and antennas in order to create electronic fences and avoid unwanted readings and overlaps. As for the beacons, several experiments were carried out to define the most adequate power, since configuration must be made in the beacon and not in the reader, which increases the level of difficulty for calibration.
