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SAITL Dairy Laboratory, a New Zealand company that conducts biological and chemical tests on milk samples for quality analysis, has been using RFID to automatically identify batches and samples, thereby increasing the speed and accuracy of identification, minimizing manual processing procedures, reducing errors, and improving Traceability.
The company’s general manager Margaret Malloch said that the laboratory receives as many as 20,000 to 30,000 cylindrical plastic bottles containing milk samples from the factory every day. The previous identification system, including bar code and manual inspection, could not meet SAITL’s needs, she added, because the previous system was too time-consuming and prone to human error.
Malloch explained: “The installation of RFID is consistent with our previous automated laboratory vision, so we set up a project to monitor how to best implement the new system and how to improve this system. We also need to provide some customers with the The information is written into the RFID tag so that the RFID tag can also be processed by this system.”
The introduction of RFID in the laboratory is challenging. Due to the close proximity of the samples and the large amount of metal in many instruments, SAITL spent a lot of time debugging RFID antennas and readers to ensure the accuracy of reading. Another challenge is that there is no human-readable interface on the new tab. The barcode labels used by the company previously contained human-readable information, but if the barcode labels were replaced by 13.56 MHz RFID tags attached to the bottom of each bottle, technicians might find it difficult to locate and identify a specific sample.
Malloch said: “This requires customizing a large antenna and reader software to read so many tags in such a short time.”
A 13.56 MHz passive RFID tag is attached to the bottom of each bottle, and the bottle is transported to dairy plants across New Zealand, ready to collect milk. The collected milk samples were sent to SAITL’s laboratory by the dairy manufacturer Fonterra. During the deployment process, a barcode label is also attached to the bottle in order to verify whether the information encoded in the label is correct. Once the system is up and running, the barcode label is removed from the bottle.
A passive 13.56 MHz RFID tag is installed at the bottom of each plastic bottle
In early 2009, SAITL gradually deployed RFID technology and provided labeled bottles to different sample collection stations within a few months. Laundry Transponder DS105 from Texas Instruments
In SAITL’s laboratory, workers first place bottles filled with milk on a pallet, and then move these bottles through three rows of RFID readers (10 readers in each row). Each tray can hold 250 bottles, and there are 30 readers that can quickly read the labels on the bottles. These readers comply with the ISO 15693 standard and have a data storage capacity of 250 bytes. The label data is then sent to SAITL’s database, and the returned information will detail the specific tests that each test sample must accept. This ensures that each sample will go through the correct biological and chemical tests to ensure the quality and safety of the milk, and then Fonterra will bottle the milk to consumers or use it to make dairy products such as cheese and ice cream. There are many kinds of RFID readers in SAITL’s laboratory. Most of the readers are customized solutions developed by Tracient to solve the unique problems faced by SAITL. For example, a test instrument can hold an ID number with no more than 20 digits, and Fonterra’s ID number is 57 characters, so the reader will make changes to reduce the 57 characters to 20. Laboratory employees will also use existing Tracient handheld readers to manually read the labels of some bottles.
In January 2010, Fonterra officially launched MCPOW, which uses RFID to track milk collection from farm to dairy. When Fonterra collects the milk stored in the big buckets on the farm, the RFID reader on the milk tanker automatically reads the information encoded in the RFID tags attached to each bucket. Each barrel is equipped with a Texas Instruments DS105 RFID tag, which contains some information such as the company ID number, the farm ID number, the temperature of the milk, the amount of milk collected, the date and time, and a status code.
SAITL employees use handheld readers to manually read the labels of some bottles
Fonterra, which installed the system for SAITL, has participated in the Milk Collection Work Plan (MCPOW), and the SAITL project is now an integral part of the work plan. In 2006
In SAITL’s deployment, a customized RFID antenna is connected to the Tracient reader, and the reader transmits the information to the central database through mobile data transmission or standard synchronization tools. Tracient also helped to produce customized readers to overcome unique problems in the laboratory, including the high number of metals and the small gap between tags. The software used by SAITL to manage data is called MADCAP (Milk Analysis Data Acquisition and Processing), provided by Contec Group.
The readers in the milk collection work plan run by Fonterra (now including SAITL) include handheld readers, readers on milk tank trucks, and readers in SAITL’s laboratory. There are thousands of devices in total. More than 14,000 milk barrels in Fonterra’s dairy factory are also labeled throughout New Zealand. This means that the company can use the label information to identify the source of milk, and also record the amount of milk collected and the temperature of the milk sample at the time of collection. . In total, more than 600,000 tags were used in this project.
The final result is the formation of a complete RFID-enabled milk collection supply chain: milk samples are labeled, milk is collected on the farm, milk is stored in the dairy factory, and the milk is tested in SAITL’s laboratory. Malloch explained that Fonterra uses RFID to encode the sample bottles and writes the sample information into the label when collecting milk on the farm. When the sample arrives at SAITL, we use the RFID label information to process the sample. All tag information is read and transferred to our database. Once the samples are tested, the results and related label information are sent back to Fonterra so they can accurately match the test results with the specific extracted samples from a specific farm.
Malloch said that after using the RFID system, the efficiency of the laboratory has been significantly improved.
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