Or more precise: 16 Million Container wheels are moving around EUROPE since January 10th 2011 controlled by UHF technology!
Europe for sure, but probably the World largest container Management project is now LIVE!
PANMOBIL does supply to all 25.000 container user Europe wide as IBM certified main supplier all necessary reading devices.
The Container owner did choose IBM to be the general system integrator caused by their large experience in UHF technology. IBM did a worldwide survey including performance and reliability tests to source the best supplier for this extraordinary complex project. PANMOBIL was pointed out to be the major UHF Reader supplier.
On top of that PANMOBIL did extend their technology to meet the low target price requested for a high volume production and easy to handle products beside their 1D and 2D Barcode Technology combined with newest UHF RFID Technology.
The project in detail:
Situation:
Plants have a long way from the grower to the end user. There are several loading and unloading stations in-between and sometimes thousands of km on the way. Reliable and robust containers are needed, which are well known all around the growers business. The procedure is similar with changing empty bottle trays against full once. The gardener does exchange empty containers with fully loaded containers with the transportation company, which is carrying their plants from Italy to Norway, or anywhere he wants to sell to. The deal can be done direct between the Italian grower and the Finnish customer, or via a plant auction.
Problem:
Because of plants are short-live products and on top pending on a season business, the time pressure on the logistics involved is extremely high. This pressure will be much higher, when the quality of the container is unreliable. Bad or weak wheels, unstable poles or breaking shelves will interfere the hectic transaction process. One auction day stays for the unbelievable amount of a 10.000 container movement. Only 20 broken containers can limit the logistic processing speed and cause expensive process delays.
The Million-Container –Market is a high competitive business where cost and quality are the main influences.
The leading container company, the Container Centralen in Denmark who is holding a 60% market share stands for their best quality containers.
Like everywhere in the world there are low cost and low quality products coming up to cut the market of the quality products by copying them as best as possible. These copies sometimes cannot be recognized by eyes even not by specialists. The difference can only be found out under serious stress tests. Weak metal and defect wheels are the most appearing faults. This does cause enormous financial lost especially in the high season periods where every lost minute and lost container counts.
3,8 million Originals are added up by 1 million copies, which disturb the logistic chain.
What to do:
The well-known logistic specialist, the Container Centralen in Denmark did try to identify their quality container by several ways in the past years. There have been different colors, 1D and 2D Barcode label versions, metal plates etc… to stop the copy activities.
It only took days or weeks until the copies made by criminals appeared in the market.
A copy proof solution was needed. A typical application for “Counterfeit Protection”.
Solution:
The Container Centralen did ask IBM to be the system integrator and solution partner to develop a copy safe system for their quality container.
The solution was split into several steps:
All containers will be fixed with a RFID lock, which cannot be opened again without breaking the RFID tag inside. Doing so, all containers have a unique UID number and are 100% identifiable.
Originality checking devices, the RFID readers, have to be used to check the originality and more. To ensure that the reading device has the advanced technology besides reading just a RFID tag, IBM had to certify the right device. All those devices must have a secure and complex operating system and run the crypto software based on a JAVA machine, created by IBM. The complex crypto algorithm does use and take care of all memory sections of the RFID chip, which are UID, EPC and free memory.
„Never say never“ means: of course you can try to produce a copy of a real certified RFID tag, but that would need an investment of a Million for get a Chip manufacturer to product thousands of these copies, which is a real high and risky investment. Even this scenario will be stopped shortly and make the risky investment useless, because of another fallback checking system.
In case somebody did do the risky investment, thousands of twins, same RFID tags will be in the market. All containers do pass the doors of the Container Centralen depots Europe wide as well as their large partners like Landgard and Flora Holland, where all container tags are scanned online with the central database in Denmark. In case of scanning one of the fake containers f.e. in Finland and Italy within a time frame which is not possible caused by the transportation time, this RFID tag identifiers will be market as potential copies at the server side. In real this containers will be rejected to the customer to find out who did bring the fake container into the logistic chain.
Each not online scanning partner, like the grower, the end customer and the transporter in-between has to connect his PANMOBIL reader once all 3 month, or even more often if he want to be always up to date, with the IBM server in Denmark, in order to update the database in his scanner. By this update he does get all information about fake found RFID tags and those which are under control and critical. By doing so there is a fast and easy to handle securing of ongoing and stable quality of the Container Centralen container guaranteed. While a grower or transporter is scanning the container tag, the scanner tells him by sound on request by vibration or pending on the device chosen on its display, whether the container is origin or a fake. A fake will be taken out of the container logistic process and been noticed to the Container Centralen to eliminate the copy source.
Amortisation:
Up to the kickoff day January the 10th 2011 all container, which look like Originals have been serviced and repaired by the Container Centralen without discussion. On top the Container Centralen had to pay all lost in process interruption at auction side when caused by weak quality containers the processing speed had been reduced. The repair cost and the responsibility for faults did increase the Container Centralen final cost and did damage the Quality image.
Being forced to connect even not original containers with the new RFID locks the system user is forced to increase his contracted containers, which does payback the higher repair cost. After a certain time, when the pool is „clean“ the yearly fee for the service, which had to be payed by the container user will be decrease, which pays back their scanner investment.
On top to the financial payback, the image for offering the best quality container will become stronger, which counts most!
There is a multiple payback for the grower, the end customer and the transporter in-between:
There will only be reliable, stable container in the process, which speeds up his operation and safes time and effort.
From cost perspective, the pool fee per year or per use will be reduced by 30%, which is quiet a large amount, when even the smallest grower has more than 100 container under contract.
On top of the checking for originality process the user does get an advanced AutoID data collecting and processing device in his hand, which opens the door for automatic data collecting and process optimization which he was thinking of already, but never did start tuning up his logistics:
Basically all container operations and scanning details ( RFID or Barcode) are stored in the scanners and thanks to the World unique PANMOBIL SCOUT Technology without any computer knowledge of the user direct transferred into most well-known Office Programs like Excel, Word…. transferred, to ready for further use. To do so, nothing else is required, than to connect the PANMOBIL scanner tot he USB port of any Windows PC. There is no driver to install, nor there is any software needed. The data transfer starts automatically, like inserting a DVD into your PC, that’s all!
In case the user did coose EXCEL to be the place where all his data should be stored, in combination with time and date for sure, EXCEL will pop up, showing all collected data in a easy to understand formatted appearance. The user is now free to sort, copy, or print….. the data.
To get most benefit out of the Container Checking devices, versions with display and keyboard, like GSbasic and GSgun are recommended. Looking at the use case, additional software modules, which handle the complete management-process, have to be designed for EASY USE, without interrupting the operator by technical gimmicks, the focus is business use only and reliability.
The Container-Management software which is one of the preferred solutions does cover all basic and advanced requirements in the business operation of a plant logistic. Caused by the Multilanguage requirement usage without additional training and handbook study, all communications between reader and operator are based on pictures and simple text. Beside the easy handling, all needed data input for checking operator ID, customer ID, order number, location, quantities etc. can be done by Barcode 1D/2D, keyboard or RFID simultaneously.
Even this low cost software module includes the World wide easiest way in data communication, the PANMOBIL SCOUT Technology, which is the first middleware solution without installing, or buying any middleware, even without any driver setup. Once all business operations are done with the mobile device, the data can be transferred or bidirectional communicated to any server locally or Worldwide by Internet, by just plugging the PANMOBIL scanner into an USB plug of an Internet connected Windows PC. That‘s all! The SCOUT Technology does the interaction automatically.
All PANMOBIL devices are complete solutions which makes the calculation more open and transparent.
Used Technology:
There are three different models selected for EUROPE largest container RFID project:
To check the originality of Thek container including the possibility to store all collected data with time and date into a local or Internet based server, or their direct use in Office Software like EXCEL , smartSCANNDY ist he preferred version.
smartSCANNDY does exactly follow the easy to use requirements and is located in a financial range, which pays back shortly. Of course like all PANMOBIL scanner simultaneously scanning of BARCODE 1D/2D and RFID is possible, in case the material flow or time and attendance collecting is requested to scan as well.
To enhance the logistic and business process mobile devices with keyboard and display are required, to enable more advanced processing. SCANNDYbasic and SCANNDYgun are the right choice. Both models are basically same products, which only differ in the handling with and without gun grid and short or long distance antenna, as well as the Li-Ion battery capacity. The usecase for both is nearly unlimited. Beside the container checking operation there are several software packages available for the Container Management or Warehouse logistics, Inventory, Order processing and much more.
Like all PANMOBIL devices, all Container Checking scanners are an open platform for any Software- or Systemhouse to develop their open applications based on C++ or JAVA running on a fast LINUX based PANMOBIL OS.
All advanced devices can be equipped with RF interfaces like GPRS / Bluetooth / WLAN.
