SEC felt that RFID was something that it wanted to have from the outset as the only feasible way to track bin usage. "RFID was a quick, relatively inexpensive way to capture the number of turns on a bin-by-bin basis at the erecting robot," says Wehrkamp. "Otherwise it's very difficult to track that." He also felt that the most economic time to do that was at the front end during bin manufacturing. SEC uses a custom tag for bin and lid. The RFID tag, which took some design work according to Wehrkamp, is about 1 inch square and is supplied by Alien Technologies. SEC supplies the RFID tags to Orbis to affix. Every bin and lid is tagged.
展开▼