RFID tag readability issues with palletized loads of consumer goods

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identifi cation technology, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. This technology is being used in enterprise supply chain management-related applications to improve the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. However, this technology has not been able to realize its promised potential because of several factors, such as lack of congruous worldwide standards, privacy issues and less than perfect read rates in supply chain applications. This research aimed to evaluate the readability issues commonly faced by tagged cases of palletized consumer products. The variables studied in this research were productpackage type, tag type, tag location on cases, pallet pattern and forklift speed through a RFID portal representative of a dock door in a warehouse. To determine which variables were the most significant, a binary logistic regression was run. The number of tags read was inputted for the number of events and total number of products per pallet as the number of trials. The variables product content, pallet pattern, and speed, and all interactions were then included in the model. It was observed that readability greatly varies for different product-package systems, with paper towels producing near-perfect reads, followed by bottled water and carbonated soda cans. The slower the forklift truck speed, the better the readability across the board, and the best pallet patterns were dependent on the product-package type. For bottled water, the best pallet pattern was column, and for carbonated soda, the interlocking pattern.

RFID in the warehouse: A literature analysis (1995–2010) of its applications, benefits, challenges and future trends

“…Likewise, the study on tagged carton containing metal and water moving on conveyor belt was conducted by Kabadurmus et al (2007) and it was found that product type is a major factor contributing to RFID tag readability and fast conveyor speed being the second reason for tag misreading. This finding coincides with the study by Singh et al (2008) and Singh et al, (2009) on palletised consumer goods, such as paper rolls, soda cans and water bottles. The variables identified were product type, pallet stacking pattern and forklift truck speed.…”

“…Several studies suggested that RFID does not provide 100% reliable results in industrial settings (Collins, 2006b;Porter et al, 2004). In most cases, the reliability problems are related to the location of tags (Wu et al, 2006), signal distortions due to dense reader set up (Leong et al, 2006) and warehouse characteristics like metal parts and moving objects (Kabadurmus et al, 2007;Bosselmann and Rembold, 2006), as well as type of handled products (Singh et al, 2009). Deficient performance of the technology directly affects warehouse operations like receiving, picking and despatching, as these are the areas that require absolute confidence in product identification.…”

Increasing performance of SDR-based collision-free RFID systems

“…A major component in large factories and warehouses for the automated identification of RFID Tags is the conveyor belt system. With daily arrivals and departures of products in the order of thousands, increasing the conveyor belt speeds without any sacrifice in the Tag identification reliability is highly desirable from a business perspective [7][8][9]. In this Section we briefly discuss how the EPC Gen2 enhanced performance, achieved with our proposed system and shown in the previous Section, can be utilized toward increasing the speed of the conveyor belts, which is directly coupled to the increased service rate as a result of the increased arrival rate of the goods, as well as toward attaining power savings involved with the logistics operations.…”

An evaluation of the ability of RFID tags to withstand distribution of fresh produce in the RPC pooling system

“…8 It was observed that readability greatly varies for different productpackage systems. A pallet load of paper towels produced near 100% readability rates followed by bottled water and carbonated soda cans.…”