RFID boosts supply chain management

By Michelle Avenant, portals journalist.

Johannesburg, 30 Mar 2015

More can be done with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve the
efficiency and visibility of goods in the supply chain.
So says professor Johann Holm of the School for Electrical, Electronic and Computer
Engineering at North West University (NWU)'s Potchefstroom campus.
"Currently, [the goods transit industry] uses GPS to track vehicles carrying goods, but
the goods are not always electronically linked to the vehicles and that's the missing
part," he says.
There are many ways RFID tags can be used, and different tags are available for
different purposes, says Holm.
He explains that passive RFID tags, which carry static information, can be attached to
each container of goods, containing details of the quantity and quality of the goods at
the beginning of their journey, as well as their time of departure and expected time of
arrival.
Active RFID tags, which are trackable from great distances and can relay changing
information, can be used to monitor the temperature and humidity of the container,
which may account for a change in the goods' quality along their journey, he
continues.Security tags can also be used to indicate whether a container's seal has
been tampered with, he adds.
Holm believes the increased and diversified implementation of RFID technology can
greatly reduce transit fraud and improve accountability monitoring within the supply
chain, particularly for industries relying on the international transit of valuable items,
such as cigarettes.Similar use of RFID could also benefit manufacturing industries in
which products are compiled from a variety of different parts, such as the motor
industry, he adds.
An electrical engineering team at NWU is currently working towards implementing
RFID technology to improve the efficiency and information supply of transit systems
within SA and elsewhere in Africa.
"I think the major development for the project lies with the development of a centralised
management system that must be put in place and interfaced with existing systems,"
says Holm.
NWU is working with a number of industry partners, such as the SA National Roads
Agency (Sanral), on pilot systems for the broader project, says professor Alwyn
Hoffman of NWU's School for Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering.
RFID readers are being installed at Sanral overload control centres (OCCs) to detect
passing heavy vehicles that have been tagged, Hoffman continues.

"We hope to demonstrate that the overload control process can be improved by
sharing information between OCCs in order to make more intelligent decisions, among
others to reduce the number of times the same vehicle will be weighed during the
same trip." Hoffman adds the information collected will be shared with other
transporters, allowing them to manage their own operations more effectively.
"In another complementary project, we are tracking the vehicles of individual
transporters through the entire value chain from where an order has been placed until
it has been delivered," says Hoffman. The team studies data such as turn-around time
and fuel consumption to establish performance benchmarks and thus monitor a
vehicle's deviation from the benchmark, he explains.
As different concepts are proven in practice, the project's implementation will be
considered on a per-partner basis, Hoffman concludes.