Tetas Textiles adopts RFID employee vehicle management system to expand RFID application scale
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Tetas Textiles, a supplier of equipment and materials for the Turkish textile industry, has expanded the company’s RFID application range by combining an employee tracking system with a vehicle tracking information system. The data collected by the vehicle information system-such as vehicle fuel consumption and location-are combined with personal information collected by RFID and cargo data collected by barcodes, allowing managers to view the status of goods delivered by employees in real time.
Located in Istanbul, Tetas uses GPS, GPRS and RFID technology to develop its vehicle information system. Before the employee receives a certain delivery task. The ID code of the vehicle and the customer’s order information are entered into the company’s computer via a bar code. When entering the vehicle, the worker uses the integrated RFID reader of the vehicle information system to scan the 13.56 MHz NXP Mifare RFID chip in the employee ID card. The employee ID card is also used to enter and exit the Tetas premises. Employees can use the vehicle system when transporting goods (such as sewing machines, office appliances and parts) or visiting customers. The GPS system in the vehicle’s information system helps the driver to navigate, and the coordinates of the vehicle’s location are sent via GPRS, so that the manager can track the employee’s location. By combining all the data, the manager understands which worker is driving which car, which order is delivered, and the location of the vehicle at any time.
“When we can understand whether the goods are in a certain position of the transportation route, the goods start to become smarter,” said Moris Yaffe, general manager of Tetas. The company started implementing this car information system six months ago and was completed in October. So far, the company has completed the equipment installation of 110 cars (including 3 trucks).
The vast majority of vehicles in the Tetas fleet are leased vehicles, so the company needs to closely monitor costs and hope to use this information to manage employees to understand when, where, and why a particular vehicle is used.
Through the data collected by the car information system, Yaffe explained that Tetas can calculate the cost of various processes and perform company tasks. The vast majority of vehicles are used by sales departments, and management may need to know whether sales staff visit their designated customers. The car information system provides managers with maps and reports, and it is also easier to see which employee uses which car, and whether to use the car on weekdays or after get off work hours.
The manager of the company’s logistics department also uses the vehicle information system to monitor the mileage of each vehicle, evaluate the performance of the freight, and use these data to calculate the cost of each trip.
This project is not Tetas’ first RFID project. In 2006, the company used RFID to track pallets in an 8,500 square meter warehouse in Tekbes. Before installing the RFID system, Tetas did not use any electronic identification methods to track the 25,000 different items the company supplied to 6,000 customers (mostly clothing manufacturers). After adopting this system, the company implemented an RFID system in its six warehouses and integrated it with Oracle E-Business Suite.
In the warehouse, Tetas installed RFID readers and antennas under the forklift to read location tags embedded in the floor
The pallets are affixed with UHF passive tags that comply with the EPC Gen 2 standard. Forklifts are equipped with RFID readers and antennas to identify pallets. When the driver unloads a pallet from the high rack, the forklift reader recognizes the rack and rack number. In addition, when the vehicle moves in the warehouse, another antenna at the bottom of the forklift recognizes the EPC Gen 2 RFID tag embedded in the floor to identify the location of the vehicle. When the goods pass the warehouse entrance and exit gates, the RFID readers installed in these locations read the passive tags on the pallets.
When the goods pass the warehouse entrance and exit gates, the RFID reader reads the pallet tags
Combining this information, the system provides Tetas with a real-time view map of the precise location of all goods in the warehouse, so as to achieve fast tracking of inventory. “Now it only takes 2 hours for us to inventory the warehouse,” Yaffe said, “The efficiency has increased by 30%-35%.”
The company bought and sold a variety of RFID readers and installed them in 20 forklifts and gates. The company uses 10 Siemens fixed readers, 9 handheld ATID readers, and a handheld Nordic ID reader to identify labeled items. The handset runs Reva Systems’ RFID software. Of the 13,000 labels the company uses each year, most of them are provided by UPM Raflatac. Tetas develops middleware for this system and integrates its own projects.
Before the implementation of RFID, Tetas had already attached two types of tags to pallets-but Yaffe said this actually made the system more complicated. “We found that the more tags are used, the more error-prone the system is,” he explained. Therefore, the company currently only applies one type of label to the pallet and adjusts the system to achieve a 99% read rate.”
The Tetas Group includes two companies that produce garments for export, and a textile, packaging label and stationery manufacturing company. Tetas uses an RFID system to track webs. The roll paper has a diameter of 100 cm, a height of 64 cm, and a weight of 673 kg.
Companies usually use barcode labels to identify rolls and assign rolls to specific pallets with EPC Gen 2 RFID tags. In some cases, however, the company applies EPC Gen 2 RFID tags to web paper to track specific details of the paper, such as quality and weight. Considering the enormous weight and size of paper rolls, and the way they are stored in high racks, RFID has proven to be an ideal way of identification. Workers approached the shelves full of paper rolls and used handhelds to read the RFID tags of the paper rolls to understand product details without having to search for barcodes.
In another RFID project, Tetas designed an RFID system to improve the exhibition experience of visitors and collect customer information. This system is called IZ-TAN-BUL, which is simply translated as “tracking, identification and location”, using active and passive RFID tags. Salespeople working at the Tetas booth wear active Wi-Fi tags so that their actions can be tracked through Wi-Fi networks. Visitors are assigned EPC Gen 2 UHF tags, which can be used to identify themselves and purchase drinks. RFID readers installed in different parts of the booth read customer tags. By compiling the data, the company can understand which customers stay in which part of the booth the longest, and track the number of customers.
Taking into account Tetas’ rich experience in RFID technology and system applications, the Turkish government and private companies encourage Tetas to provide RFID technology to other companies and industries. To this end, Tetas is now using RFID, bar code, GPS and GPRS technology to develop a vehicle yard management system, which is expected to be available soon.
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