Tracking of Returnable Packaging and Transport Units with active RFID in the grocery supply chain
Introduction
A quick look at the supply chain of consumer goods reveals that traditional procedures are still most common in the landscape. Even though these procedures have become highly optimized, it seems that a technological ceiling has been reached. In other words, cutting down the costs of a particular process of the logistics and global supply chain, i.e. from the producer or manufacturer to the end consumer, requires nowadays a huge effort [1]. Nevertheless, the sector keeps seeking a greater degree of automation that might go beyond the actual concepts, procedures, and assumptions. Partly, this search for innovation is a consequence of larger retailer mandates on suppliers [2] but also of increasingly stricter regulatory compliance [3], [4]. And both retailers and regulatory bodies have strong reasons for their requirements. Just a closer look on how the supply chain operates may back up some of these reasons, as we will see.
A typical supply chain is a complex amalgam of actors which need coordination, collaboration, and information exchanges among them to increase productivity and efficiency [6], [7]. Every day millions of transport units (cases, boxes, pallets, and containers) are managed worldwide with a limited or even with a lack of control and knowledge of their status on real time (visibility on the supply chain) by the actors. As an example, CHEP [8], the world’s largest pallet and container leasing company, has more than 285 million units, of which more than 200 millions are wooden pallets. They have to face logistics and economical problems to provide on time service with a bounded quantity of pallets due to the inaccuracy on where a pallet is and for how long it has been there. Thus, it is not surprising that major retailers push to finish this lack of control by forcing suppliers to adopt appropriate technologies (the Wal-Mart mandate [2], for instance).
Let us now look at our target sector, the grocery supply chain: fresh fruit and vegetables. All over the logistics supply chain millions of pallets are disposed every year only in Europe. Even though millions of these wooden pallets might be reused, it is still necessary to mass-produce new ones every year. The several levels of fresh products packaging (primary, secondary, and tertiary) generate a variety of residues depending on the stage of the product cycle. In fact, this sector is responsible for the generation of thousands of tons of all kind of residues just in Europe every year. The European Union, aware of this problem, has passed demanding packaging directives to be complied with [3]. The environmental policy goals are: to decrease or even to prevent the use of packaging, to recover and recycle all residues, and to make the producer responsible for the waste, as well as for the costs of recovering and recycling. These rules are crucial for a sustainable growth, but pose an extra cost for the actors of the supply chain. In addition, there is another important European directive since January 2005, the traceability of consumer goods [4]: it forces to register any steps, used materials, manufacturing processes, etc., during the entire life-cycle of a product. If a batch in bad state is found, it must be recalled from the market as quickly as possible. Therefore, there must be an efficient procedure to trace the affected batch with absolute guarantees [5]. The traced information must be registered for a few years, which gives a hint of the vast amount of information to be collected, processed, stored, and managed. Finally, controlling the temperature of perishable products along the supply chain (cold chain control) is an important issue because of both sanitary and economical reasons [9]. As concluded in [10], cold chain management requires very careful temperature control and quick reactions, that is, accurate and timely information on where and when the cold chain has been broken. With the previous examples, we have just brought a few of the issues within the context of grocery supply chain, which support the need for an intelligent supply chain that provides automated collaboration and information exchanges among their actors [11].
Cold chain control and traceability demand an increase in the in-transit visibility of a pallet and its carried products. Therefore, automated collection of information flows in real time or, at least, in a bounded time is becoming increasingly important for the grocery supply chain. However, current data capturing technologies are based on attached barcode labels. Barcode technology is a robust and cheap solution with well-known and tested systems. Nevertheless, scanning a multitude of labels is a slow, one-by-one and error-prone process [12]. Hence, Passive RFID has drawn a lot of attention as a revolutionary data capturing technology to be used both on pallets or on cases. However, Passive RFID deployment at the supply chain has not taken off as clearly as foreseen. From our point of view, in accordance with reference [13], pp. 18, two reasons may explain this situation:
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Cutting down costs. Because of the high number of transport units, the sector concentrates on cutting down their cost. A wooden pallet is already a cost-effective solution. It seems that users still do not clearly perceive benefits in relation to the additional cost of adding a passive tag to each pallet.
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RFID perceived utility. RFID is sometimes perceived as a mere substitute of barcode labels within the already established procedures and services, rather than as a potential generator of new value-added services, which avoids failures and saves money.
Regarding utility, the obvious solution is to offer better and new services. Indeed, RFID can generate new data flows but it is useless by itself if there are no better and new value-added services based on data management [14]. Regarding costs, the previous literature [12], [15] has identified an additional key component needed to obtain a quick amortisation of the investment: the use of returnable transport units. Clearly, returnable transport units and adequate tracking technology complement each other when addressing the aforementioned issues: while returnable transport units may help to comply with waste regulation, apart from other operational and ecological benefits, there is still a need for procedures that ensure efficient and loss-free management of containers [15]. On the other hand, an appropriate RFID technology not only supports cold chain control and traceability, but also provides asset visibility, which, in turn, may improve management of containers [14].
The Spanish company ECOMOVISTAND [16], aware of the issues discussed above, has developed an innovative and ecological packaging and transport unit, called MT, for the grocery supply chain. The MT goes one step ahead of conventional reusable containers by providing additional interesting features (see Section 2), and it may be used as a standalone solution. However, the company is highly interested in offering tracking, tracing and cold chain control as value-added services. The Telematics Research Group from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena is collaborating with ECOMOVISTAND on developing the foundations of an innovative logistics system by means of Active RFID and the application of Information Technologies. In this paper we show the architecture and design aspects of MEGASTAND, the RFID and middleware support for the MT. It covers both RFID device development and control and management middleware based on Web Services.
From a methodological point of view, this paper contributes to design science research [17]: a problem of relevance (residue reduction, traceability and cold chain control) is presented; an artifact that addresses the problem is shown (the MT with embedded tracking and monitoring functionality, and the integration software); the design solution is based on both business and technical requirements, and the system components and alternatives are discussed with rigour (as derived from the effective use of the knowledge base [17]); and, finally, instances of the artifact are described (our implementations). However, as we have recently started a pilot trial, a thorough experimental evaluation of our design is left as future work. All the design has been refined in an iterative process, in close collaboration with the company.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. MT features and the company business model are presented and discussed in Section 2. Technological requirements to control and manage a population of MTs over the supply chain are discussed in Section 3. The MEGASTAND system architecture is described in Section 4, focusing on the developed Active RFID system and the Web Services solution. Related work is reviewed in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 provides conclusions and future work.
Section snippets
MT: A returnable ecological system for packaging, transport, storage, and display of products
A simplified overview of the grocery supply shows the following operations: (1) From Producer to Distribution Warehouses products are packaged (primary and secondary), put on pallets and delivered on trucks. (2) From Distribution Warehouses to Retailer/Supermarkets, received batches are inventoried, stored and shipped when a retailer order is received. (3) From Retailer to Consumers, batches are inventoried again and placed on display stands (usually long shelves). Intensive manual labor is
Technological needs and requirements
Active RFID [7] is the core of the solution proposed to achieve the aforementioned business needs. MTs are tracked by attaching an RFID tag to them. Thus, RFID Readers are needed in check-points along the supply chain. In addition, a RFID data integration and control middleware is necessary. Let us first review RFID constraints posed by the ECOMOVISTAND business model:
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Long range readings. MTs are carried by forklifts and move through large, open warehouses and dock gates. Besides, this
MEGASTAND system architecture
In this section we describe the architecture of the information framework designed for the MT. The design process has been led by the company business model. As said in Section 2.1 ECOMOVISTAND deals with leasing the MT and providing the infrastructure needed to automate product traceability and tracking as value-added services. However, the company neither integrates its products into the customer information framework nor manages the customer systems. This business model poses two fundamental
Related work and discussion
Our work for MT information technologies support has spanned two areas: Active RFID tag development and RFID middleware integration. In these areas, EPCglobal [21] is the industry-driven reference for RFID standardization. Together with the Electronic Product Code (EPC) numbering scheme, they are developing standards that describe all the components and architecture of a global network of RFID tags, Readers, and information systems, which would allow sharing information over an entire supply
Conclusions and future work
In this paper we have shown the architecture and design decisions of the information technologies framework for the ECOMOVISTAND MT pooling service and value-added services.
The MT is an innovative Returnable Packaging and Transport Unit, which covers all stages in the grocery supply chain, from producer to retailer. The MT as standalone solution provides environmental benefits and costs savings, but needs additional technological support to reach its true potential. Active RFID may help the MT
Acknowledgements
We are specially grateful to Juan García-Legaz, ECOMOVISTAND manager and inventor of the MT, for his support to this work. This work has been funded by Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia grant CON-PARTE-1 TEC2007-67966-01/TC, and CARM grant SIRA TIC-TEC 06/02-2006, and it has been developed with the support of “Programa de Ayudas a Grupos de Excelencia de la Región de Murcia”, Fundación Séneca (Plan Regional de Ciencia y Tecnología 2007/2010, CARM). We also thank three anonymous reviewers for
Alejandro S. Martinez-Sala received the Electrical Engineering degree in 2000 and the Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT), Spain, in 2006. In October 2001 he joined the UPCT where he is assistant professor of the Department of Information Technologies and Communications. He has been involved in several National research projects related to RFID, and wireless sensor networks.
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Alejandro S. Martinez-Sala received the Electrical Engineering degree in 2000 and the Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT), Spain, in 2006. In October 2001 he joined the UPCT where he is assistant professor of the Department of Information Technologies and Communications. He has been involved in several National research projects related to RFID, and wireless sensor networks.
Esteban Egea-Lopez received the Telecommunications Engineering degree in 2000, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain, the Master Degree in Electronics in 2001, from the University of Gavle, Sweden, and Ph.D. in Telecommunications in 2006 from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT). Since 2001, he is an assistant professor of the Department of Information Technologies and Communications at UPCT. His research interest is focused on RFID, ad-hoc and wireless sensor networks.
Felipe Garcia-Sanchez is Telecommunication Engineer by the Polytechnical University of Valencia since 2001. In the same year, he joined the Polytechnic University of Cartagena as an assistant obtaining the Ph.D. degree in 2005. His current research areas involve systems integration, handoff and mobility and performance evaluation. He is author or coauthor of several papers in conferences and journals.
Joan Garcia-Haro is a professor at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Spain. He is author or coauthor of more than 60 journal papers mainly in the fields of switching, wireless networking and performance evaluation. From April 2002 to December 2004 he served as EIC of the IEEE Global Communications Newsletter, included in the IEEE Communications Magazine. He is a technical editor of the same magazine from March 2001. He also holds an Honorable Mention for the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial paper Award (1995).