**1. Introduction**

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340 Radio Frequency Identification from System to Applications

Texas, USA. I.S.B.N.: 84-695-3318-5

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2008.

2010

The chapter is centred on the analysis of internal flow traceability of goods (products and/or packaging) along the supply chain by an Indoor Positioning System (IPS) based on Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology.

A typical supply chain is an end-to-end process with the main purpose of production, trans‐ portation, and distribution of products. It is relative to the products' movements from the supplier to the manufacturer, distributor, retailer and finally to the end consumer. More‐ over, a supply chain is a complex amalgam of parties that require coordination, collabora‐ tion, and information exchange among them to increase productivity and efficiency [1, 2]. A supply chain is made up of people, activities, and resources involved in moving products from suppliers to customers and information from customers to suppliers. For this reason, the traceability of logistics flows (physical and information) is a very important issue for the definition and design of manufacturing processes, improvement of layout and increase of security in work areas.

European Parliament (Regulation (EC) No. 178/2002) [3] makes it compulsory to trace goods and record all steps, used materials, manufacturing processes, etc. during the entire life cy‐ cle of a product [4]. According to the European Parliament, companies recognize the need and importance of tracing materials in indoor environments.

Traditionally, the traceability system is performed through the asynchronous fulfilment of checkpoints (i.e. doorways) by materials. In such cases, the tracking is manual, executed by operators. Often companies are not aware of the inefficiencies due to these systems of trace‐ ability such as low precision and accuracy in measurements (i.e. no information between doorways), more time spent by operators and costs (due to the full-effort of operators who

have to trace target positions and movements). According to [5] every day millions of trans‐ port units (cases, boxes, pallets, and containers) are managed worldwide with limited or even with lack of knowledge regarding their status in real-time. In order to overcome the lack of data due to traceability, automatic identification procedures (Auto-ID) could be a sol‐ ution. They have become very popular in many service industries, purchasing and distribu‐ tion logistics, manufacturing companies and material flow systems. Automatic identification procedures provide information about people, vehicles, goods, and products in transit with‐ in the company [6]. It is possible to note several advantages using an automatic identifica‐ tion system such as the reduction of theft, increase of security during the transport and distribution of assets, and increase of knowledge of objects' position in real-time.

ly, the section provides a brief description of RFID and in particular RFID-UWB technology

Generally, companies provide goods and/or services to customers, purchasing raw materials from suppliers. In order to increase productivity and efficiency within the supply chain, the parties (suppliers, manufacturers, and customers) have to exchange materials and informa‐

In a typical supply chain, logistics flows can be classified into *physical* and *informative*. Physi‐ cal flows include operative activities (e.g. transport, storage of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products, etc.). A great purpose of the optimization of these flows is the reduc‐ tion of transport and storage costs. Information flows concern the information on the de‐ mand, logistics, and production planning. Figure 1 shows a graphical representation of a

PHYSICAL FLOW

Production Assembly Control

CUSTOMER

Manufacturing Logistics and Packaging Management Using RFID

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53890

343

INFORMATIVE FLOW

Within the supply chain, it may be essential to know both the position and the movements of operators, pallets, tools, and packages. The traceability of flows within a company is a

Traditionally, the process of traceability of goods is performed through the asynchronous and automatic fulfilment of doorways by materials (e.g. bar code reading process) or totally manual by an operator who identifies and measures all movements between work centres, assembly and control workstations, and warehouses (Spaghetti Chart and From-To Chart are two technologies in which the presence of an operator to identify the position and map the movements of goods is necessary). This system implies approximate measurements, fulltime effort and wasted time by the operator, and the possibility of human errors. In order to improve performances in the traceability process and to reduce costs optimizing the internal flows, companies are beginning to use automatic identification procedures (Auto-ID). The main advantage of this method is the time reduction in measuring the position and map‐ ping the movements of an object. Real Time Locating System (RTLS) is an automatic system

**Figure 1.** General scheme of a supply chain, underlining materials and information flows

MANUFACTURING COMPANY

Supplying Distribution

(Radio Frequency IDentification-Ultra Wide Band).

supply chain, underlining physical and informative flows.

**2.1. Logistics flows**

tion among themselves.

SUPPLIER

crucial aspect that has to be optimized.

Automatic identification procedures can also be applied to packaging products, instead of to each item contained in the package. Packaging is becoming the cornerstone of processing ac‐ tivities [7]. Sometimes products are very expensive and packages contain important and crit‐ ical goods (for example dangerous or explosive materials) and the tracking of goods – and packaging in particular – is a critical function. The main advantage of automatic system ap‐ plication to packages is the possibility to map the path of all items contained into the pack‐ ages and to find out their real-time position. The installation of automatic systems in packages allows costs and time to be reduced (by installing, for example, the tag directly on the package instead of on each product contained inside the package).

The purpose of the chapter is to provide an innovative automatic solution for the traceability of *everything that moves* within a company, in order to simplify and improve the process of logistics flow traceability and logistics optimization. The chapter deals with experimental re‐ search that consists of several tests, static and dynamic, tracing the position (static) and movements (dynamic) of targets (e.g. people, vehicles, objects) in indoor environments. In order to identify the best system to use in the real-time traceability of products, the authors have chosen Real Time Location Systems (RTLSs) and, in particular, the Indoor Positioning Systems (IPSs) based on Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology. The authors dis‐ cuss the RFID based system using UWB technology, both in terms of design of the system and real applications.

The chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 briefly describes IPS systems, looking in more depth at RFID technology. After that the experimental research with the relative results and discussion are described in Section 3. Section 4 presents an analysis of RFID traceability sys‐ tems applied to packaging. Conclusions and further research are discussed in Section 5.
