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Christmas is the peak sales season for many businesses. For Grupo Disber, the demand is particularly high during this season. In Spain, Christmas gift baskets filled with various foods and alcoholic beverages are the most popular Christmas gifts. In the past few months of Christmas alone, Grupo Disber has sold 1.5 million Christmas gift baskets, ranking first in sales in the country.
In order to better supervise the loading and transportation of Christmas gift baskets, as well as to reduce labor and improve accuracy, Grupo Disber installed an RFID system in the company’s 75,000-square-meter warehouse building in Valencia. The movement of gift baskets in the warehouse. The company claims that this technology has reduced staff costs by 10% while eliminating 90% of shipping errors and winning customers back. This system is provided by Tag Ingenieros Consultores, a Valencia RFID solution provider. “Grupo Disber hopes to increase productivity, reduce errors, and establish an overall tracking system,” said Javier Munoz Giner, President of Tag Ingenieros Consultores.
Christmas gift baskets-actually a cardboard box, the size is 1.3 feet * 3 feet * inches (some boxes are twice as large)-can contain cognac, brandy, champagne, sausage, chocolate, nuts, cheese, wine glasses, etc. Due to the busy Christmas season, the company hires 400-500 more workers at this time (four months) each year to specialize in the packaging, storage and transportation of gift boxes. Grupo Disber consolidates and transports as many as 1,000 pallets every day. Each pallet is loaded with an average of 50 boxes. These pallets are transported by 20-25 trucks to all parts of the country. Before adopting the RFID solution, workers manually confirm the accuracy of the order completion and check whether the shipped gift box contains the wrong gift. The staff simply visually compares the contents of the box and the list. However, this method cannot ensure the accuracy of the gifts, especially when there are often errors when shipping large quantities of gift boxes, and it cannot ensure that each gift box is delivered to the right customer at the right time.
Each gift box is packaged with an EPC Gen 2 RFID tag
After deciding to adopt RFID technology, Grupo Disber conducted system tests in July-September 2008, before the Christmas season. When the company saw that the box label could be accurately read, it officially installed an RFID reader and software, and fully adopted the RFID system. It is now the third year. This system uses EPC Gen 2 UHF tags, which consist of Impinj’s Thin Propeller antenna and Monza 3 chip. When the box is packed, Grupo Disber workers paste a pre-encoded RFID label on the lid of the box to complete the box encapsulation. If someone tries to open the box, the label will be torn and can no longer be used. For non-standard or customized gift boxes, the company uses printers to print and encode labels on its own.
After each order is received, Grupo Disber forwards it to the warehouse, where workers print the RFID tags needed for the gift boxes ordered. After the boxes are removed from the warehouse racks, they are directly labeled. Workers use Intermec IP30 handhelds to read the labels and associate them with the products that have been loaded on the pallet. The ID code of each item (corresponding to the order number in the back-end system) is sent to the Tag Ingenieros Consultores software via Wi-Fi connection-installed on the Grupo Disber back-end system-to share data with the company’s management system.
The packaging machine rotates the packaging pallet, and a reader reads the ID code of each box label
The loaded pallets are sent to a stretch film packaging machine (three in total) for packaging. The packaging machine rotates the packaging pallets so that an Intermec IF61 reader (connected with two Intermec IA39B antennas) can read each sheet The ID code of the tag, and the tag ID code is sent back to the Tag Ingenieros Consultores software through the cable connection, and the software confirms whether the box matches the order. Then, the system upgrades the order status, indicating that the pallet has been loaded and packaged.
If there is an error in a batch of shipments, such as the wrong box is placed on the pallet, the system will display an alarm on the screen where the packaging machine is installed. If the pallet is loaded correctly, the screen displays the correct information.
When the pallet is packaged, it is sent to an automatic pallet transport system equipped with a reader and antenna to read the ID code of the box label
When the pallets are packaged and the software confirms that the order is completed, the workers transport the pallets to one of the five warehouses in the building, and send them through an automatic pallet transportation via a conveyor belt (a total of four channels are sent to the warehouse). Each channel established by Tag Ingenieros Consultores is equipped with an IF61 reader and four IA39C antennas to read tags from four different angles.
When the pallet passes through the RFID scanning channel, the software upgrade order status is warehouse storage, and the ID of the channel reader indicates which warehouse the pallet is stored in. Then, the system sends a message to the dispatch staff indicating that the pallet has entered the storage state, and then dispatches the truck to pick up the goods according to the number of pallets passing through the channel and the order number.
When transporting pallets, the pallets are placed in the loading area of the warehouse. Due to the large number of pallets waiting to be shipped, employees in the loading area use handheld readers to identify tags. Tag Ingenieros Consultore designs and provides 12 mobile RFID readers for vehicles. Each vehicle contains an IF61 reader and 4 IA39B circularly polarized antennas. When preparing to load the truck, the worker pushes a vehicle-mounted mobile reader to the loading area, and each pallet passes through the mobile reader before being loaded onto the truck. The information is sent to the back-end system again through the cable connection between the mobile reader and the car laptop.
If gift boxes are returned from customers, they will pass through a mobile portal reader again, software upgrade data, and management will be notified.
One of the biggest challenges encountered during the installation phase was finding the right label, Munoz said, due to the various sizes and shapes of the boxes. In the end, the team tested and found that the inlay using the Impinj Thin Propeller antenna and the Monza 3 chip best met the requirements.
Currently, the software developed by TAG Ingenieros Consultores shares data with the company’s business management software through a file exchange system. In the future, Munoz stated that the company plans to modify its business management software so that it can directly receive data from RFID readers.
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