Challenge
There are many reasons why accurate tracking of Gitterboxes is essential:
- The products inside are often very valuable and it is important to ensure that they don’t go missing.
- The Gitterboxes themselves have a reasonable value and the owners don’t want them taken out of the supply chain.
- In some cases Gitterboxes from different owners end up in the same place (shared
component makers etc) and there is a need to confirm ownership. - If Gitterboxes end up stockpiled in one place this can hold up lead times so tracking to maintain the process and goods flow is essential.
The main issues with applying a tag to the Gitterboxes:
- Strong attachment is required as the cages can get heavily knocked but in the past this has led to obtrusive fittings on the inside of the cages that can damage the contents or the people handling them.
- Even with a strong fitting a heavy knock in transit or when the cages are being stacked for storage can easily dislodge or damage a protruding tag.
- A complicated fitting procedure involving tools is costly in terms of man hours (this can be considerably more than the cost of the tag itself).
- The Gitterboxes are made of metal which can negatively impact on RF performance so a specialist, proven on-metal tag is needed.
“This has been a very satisfying project to work on knowing what a big issue we are solving for the hugely important automotive and other industry supply chains. The end result looks simple but much work has gone into this and it has been a true team effort between us as a leading tag encasement designer, HID as a leader in RFID technology and Mieloo & Alexander who can make the data come to life in a user friendly system – brilliant.”
Jürgen Glasneck from Logistics Arts
Solution
Tag design specialist ‘Logistics Arts’ have come up with a beautifully simple yet highly effective tag design that can be easily, seamlessly and securely attached to a Gitterbox with no tools in a few seconds.
HID have used their industry leading knowledge of on-metal tags to ensure the innovative tag enclosure is armed with robust RFID capabilities providing consistent read performance. Solutions provider Mieloo & Alexander have created a powerful management information tool that can provide transparency of the process flow of
the Gitterboxes in circulation within the supply chain so that stocks can be monitored, surplus build-ups minimized and ‘just in time’ processes put in place providing ultimate scheduling, visibility and control.
Result
Easy attachment – no tools required The attachment process is easy and requires no additional tools, fittings or ties. It takes a few seconds using the tag’s built-in hinge mechanism to perfectly fit between the metal bars of the Gitterbox leaving no ‘protrusions’ that can be dislodged.
The tag is available in two options – one that is permanent and cannot be removed once fitted and one that is removable. The initial tags are opaque but there are plans to introduce an option with a clear case so that a human readable label or barcode can also be contained within it.
