The largest apricot fruit producer in the southern hemisphere adopts RFID to improve efficiency and salary accuracy

Qew grows apricot trees in Tasmania, Australia. When the harvest season comes every year, the company needs to hire up to 150 seasonal workers to pick the fruit. Qew pays workers based on the number of boxes they pick, encouraging them to pick as many fruits as possible.

In the past, every fruit picker assigned some waxed paper labels before going to work every day, and each label was divided into three parts with two rows of fine holes. When the worker picked up a box, he pasted a paper label on the fruit box, and then tore off one third (the boundary of the pores) as his proof. When the tractor arrived at the orchard to pick up the fruit box, the employee tore off the middle section of the label and sent it to the office for liquidation that night. The box is then sent to a refrigerated storage room. If the fruit box is not full or there is a problem with the fruit, the company finds the fruit picker who handles the fruit box according to the label of the fruit box.

According to Qew Orchards spokesperson Alistair Chong, because paper labels can no longer be reused and manual systems are time-consuming and inefficient, the company hopes to adopt new technologies for fruit picking management. The company has also tried barcode stickers, but the barcodes are exposed to the sun and then sent back to the storage racks with lower temperatures, which are easier to fade, so that relevant information cannot be found.

“Considering the time and the number of fruit boxes, RFID is the most suitable choice,” Chong said. “RFID saves us time and labor. Now we don’t have to sit and count paper labels every night.”

After some comparisons, Qew Orchards finally hired Ramp RFID Solutions-an Australian RFID software developer and system integrator-to implement the system. The two companies tested the technology before fully implementing the system-especially the performance of the RFID tag, taking into account the density and moisture content of the apricot fruit.

“The biggest challenge is to find an RFID technology that can work through moisture and fruit density,” Chong said. “The test point is to determine the best reading point for the tag. Another challenge is the reading distance.”

Each fruit picker is assigned a plastic ID card the size of a credit card for identification and 100 fruit box identification cards. The work card and fruit box card contain a UHF EPC Gen 2 passive RFID inlay. A CSL CS461 UHF EPC Gen 2 four-port fixed reader, equipped with a CS778 near-field antenna, can allocate 100 tags per worker in a few seconds. The antenna is specially designed and can be used to identify high-moisture objects.

Since the maximum number of workers in the orchard at any time is 150, the company adopted 150 worker cards, numbered from 1 to 150. Every day, using the OnRamp Freeway system, Qew Orchards places a worker card on the near-field antenna, and then allocates 100 fruit box cards corresponding to the work card. The system interface displays the worker’s card number and the number of assigned tags, and the operator reconfirms.

Near the weighing station, Qew uses an RFID door reader to read the number of fruit boxes

When the worker fills a fruit box, he inserts an assigned fruit box card into a plastic sleeve fixed on the box. The fruit boxes filled with fruit are then stacked on the pallet and moved to the weighing platform by the forklift workers. A portal reader with a height of 4 meters and a width of 2 meters is installed near the weighing platform. Four far-field antennas are connected to the CS461 reader, and the reader is connected to a PC via Ethernet. When the door-type infrared sensor is touched, the reader starts to read all the bin cards. OnRamp Access software displays the number of read cards and their corresponding workers. The operator then clicks the confirm button to confirm the reading.

All information collected by the system is written into a SQL Express database. The Qew Orchards manager then generates a report that displays the total number of bin cards allocated to each worker and the actual number of bins picked by the worker through the OnRamp Navigator browser. The report can be printed or imported into the payroll system, and the company can view it through a local area network or the Internet.

Each Qew box card contains EPC Gen 2 RFID inlay

Navigator is currently used to run picking reports, such as how many boxes of fruit boxes a worker picks in a working day. This system has now been expanded to upload information to the database and integrate with a Toshiba Tec B-SX4 RFID printer.

Chong stated that he and Ramp RFID Solutions sales and technical staff spent two weeks on system installation and training.