RFID-based Solution for Drinks Industry from Jungheinrich

Logistics Insight Asia - New Products, 16/7/2008

Jungheinrich has developed its own RFID-based solution. The high point of this system: transponders are positioned in the pallets and aerials are integrated in the stacker’s forks. The transponders are read automatically on entering and exiting the pallets. “This guarantees fast and above all safe identification of all pallets”, says Dr. Markus Heinecker who is responsible for the warehouse management and new technologies business sectors at Jungheinrich. This newly developed solution is mainly used for recording and monitoring multi-depth pallet transports. “This is particularly interesting for applications in the drinks industry but also for other sectors”, Heinecker continues.

The EU standard 178/2002 applies to the drinks industry and according to this, every producer must guarantee the ability to retrace complete batches of his goods. This necessitates for example that the warehouse administration system must know the location of every pallet at any time. In drinks industry applications, barcodes on pallets were in the past frequently scanned manually and this also applies to multi-depth transports with fork lift trucks. “This process is often prone to errors. There is no certainty about stock levels. The challenge in our solution was to reduce this disadvantage with an automatic system”, Markus Heinecker recounts.

In the actual application, a forklift truck picks up and transports six plastic half pallets at the same time. The pallets carry drinks and are transported from Production to the warehouse and from the warehouse to Goods-out. One RFID tag (transponder) is fixed to the centre of each pallet base. Each transponder is given a clear number. The transponder is “married” to the goods in the warehouse administration system as soon as the pallet is loaded with articles. The truck driver recognises on his terminal that is connected via radio to the warehouse administration system whether he has picked up or deposited the right pallet and he is able to correct this if required. This total solution was put through the acid test by a customer from the drinks industry in spring 2008. “The test was very successful with almost 100 percent readout rate”, reports Markus Heinecker.

Jungheinrich AG, www.jungheinrich.com