Argentine pharmaceutical company uses RFID to optimize product tracking and security
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Laboratorios Gador has completed a pilot RFID system to evaluate the ability of this supply chain technology to trace drugs at the item level, packaging level, and pallet level. The company is one of Argentine’s largest pharmaceutical suppliers, supplying 2.5 million patients every month through its sales network.
This successful test was carried out by four companies, Telectrónica, Impinj, Zebra Technologies, and UPM RFID. It was the first RFID drug pilot completed in Argentinian to demonstrate the high value of the technology against susceptibility to counterfeiting, transfer and theft. Product identification, tracking and security capabilities. According to research by Havoscope Black Markets, a leading research company, counterfeit medicines are the number one commodity in the global black market activity, valued at US$200 billion each year. The use of RFID technology to track and trace drugs is to cope with this problem.
The RFID reader uses radio waves to excite the RFID tag and retrieve the data stored on the tag. However, Laboratorios Gador’s RFID-labeled medicines, including liquids, are wrapped in metal blister packaging and tubes that interfere with RFID radio waves.
The company’s automatic packaging production line produces hundreds of products per minute, requiring the RFID system to encode and read various data on each tagged product at a very high speed. Reading the pallets of Laboratorios Gador is also complicated, because each pallet contains 360 pieces of metal-clad medicines, stacked in 18 layers, forming a multi-layer barrier to the radio waves emitted by the RFID reader. Lic. Alan Gidekel, CEO of Telectrónica, said: “The key is that we have to design an RFID system that optimizes product tracking throughout the production process without affecting work efficiency.”
Telectrónica has designed a brand new EPC global UHF Gen RFID system that can meet all these requirements to identify single medicines, multiple packages and pallets.
The system includes Impinj’s Speedway Revolution reader, reader antenna and encoding software, UPMRFID chip, Zebra’s RFID printer and Teletricónica’s tracking software. After the system is fully put into use, it will help Laboratorios Gador company improve inventory management, improve delivery accuracy, and improve patient safety and trust in certified drugs.
UPM RFID Americas Sales Director Jan Svoboda said: “UPM RFID is very pleased to participate in this innovation pilot. The pilot shows that RFID has the ability to track and trace drugs not only within the company, but also throughout the supply chain. We believe that the pioneering project of Laboratorios Gador will South America is paving the way for wider use of RFID.”
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