Indian ITC company uses RFID system to effectively control the humidity of cut tobacco
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In order to ensure the quality of shredded tobacco, Indian cigarette exporter ITC monitors the humidity of shredded tobacco in every production link from raw materials to finished products. It turned out that the staff had to weigh the tobacco samples in each link and record the results on paper labels. Later, the company adopted the RFID system, which greatly simplified the operation process of monitoring the humidity of cut tobacco, and the working time was shortened by 40% compared with the original.
The humidity control of cut tobacco is very important in the cigarette production process, because cut tobacco can only be used for cigarette production when it reaches a certain humidity level. In the past, in order to effectively control the humidity of shredded tobacco, it was necessary to repeatedly heat and weigh the shredded tobacco during processing. Through testing the tobacco samples, after the samples are manually weighed, the staff records the results on paper labels, and the paper labels follow the samples throughout the entire production process. At the end of each working day, the label data of about 400 samples were manually input into the Excel sheet for data analysis. This not only can effectively ensure the quality of the cut tobacco, but also can find equipment that may cause excessive humidity in the cut tobacco.
However, because the manual data recording and input process is too slow and error-prone, ITC adopted an RFID system to control the humidity of the tobacco.
Under the control of the RFID system, when the shredded tobacco arrives in the warehouse, the staff can quickly collect a test sample of the shredded tobacco and store the sample in a palm-sized plastic cylindrical container. A paper label is affixed to the container. The label contains a passive 13.56MHz TI RFID label. The RFID label conforms to the ISO15693 standard, has 1000 bytes, and can read and write memory. The paper label and RFID label are designed to resist high temperature and waterproof. .
The staff uses a Psion Teklogix handheld reader to write data into the RFID tag of the plastic container, and selects the original real estate of the tobacco, the location in the factory, the processing equipment used, the processing time, and the tobacco sample according to the pull-down menu of the reader. The result of each weighing, etc.
The staff took the plastic container of each sample to three workstations, each of which was equipped with a balance. The balance was connected to an RFID reader and located under an antenna of the reader. The staff put the plastic container on the balance, and at the same time, an empty, high-temperature-resistant, labeled metal container was also placed under an independent antenna. The reader reads the ID number and weight on the RFID tag on the plastic container, and writes them to the RFID tag of the metal container. The tag itself has stored the weight of the empty container. Subsequently, the staff transferred the tobacco sample from the plastic container to the metal container for weighing, then put the metal container with the sample and the tobacco into the oven, bake it in the oven at 110°C for 4 hours, and then take out the sample. The container and the remaining shredded tobacco, the container is weighed again, the new weight is recorded in the RFID tag, and the reader reads all the data stored in the tag. This information is uploaded to the company’s back-end data through a wired connection, so that ITC can effectively evaluate the tobacco processing results.
The RFID system has changed the way of data recording of tobacco samples, enabling ITC not only to abandon low-quality labels, but also to save time in collecting samples. According to a person from ITC, the RFID system makes the humidity control of cut tobacco more precise and reliable.
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