Redefining Track and Trace Technology - Manufacturing.net

The food and beverage industry faces an ever-increasing customer demand. The pressure is high for companies to achieve greater efficiency and more transparency, creating an immediate need for advanced technology and innovation. Track and trace technology such as radio frequency identification (RFID) can give food and beverage companies the capabilities needed to take their operations to the next level.

More supply chains are leveraging RFID technology to collect data and insights that reveal pertinent details about their supply chains in real time. However, new technology requires equipment that is capable of supporting RFID. As the technology becomes more common, reusable packaging manufacturers are finding ways to more reliably adhere chips to plastic packaging, such as pallets, for improved asset tracking.

RFID tags can be molded in or welded on — a retrofit option — to a plastic pallet. The purpose of the tag is to track the plastic pallet throughout its lifetime. Why is this beneficial for supply chains? By tracking packaging throughout its lifetime, comprehensive data can be collected for real-time and future decision-making. Analyzing this data leads to well-rounded insights that are often more difficult to gather from one-time-use packaging.

For the food and beverage industry specifically, RFID is becoming more popular for higher-turn items, offering customers more data points to identify areas of improvement within their supply chains. For customers shipping large quantities and seeking supply chain improvements, implementing this new and advanced technology is crucial for their business.  

How RFID works: RFID tags can be attached to almost any asset, including pallets, cases, containers, individual parts, products and finished goods. Tags come in many forms: labels, riveted plaques and, in some cases, they can be molded into packaging products.

The microchip within the RFID tag carries information that identifies the product, and potentially tells users where it was made and where it has been (all depending on how the user has implemented the technology). RFID technology uses radio frequency waves to transfer data between the RFID tag and a reader. These waves are picked up by a small antenna that accompanies the microchip on the RFID tag. The power received is enough to turn on the microchip, which sends information back to the reader via radio waves. The reader then converts the radio waves returned from the RFID tag to data, which is relayed to computers for analyzation.

This technology might seem complex, but it is not much different from bar code scanning — just more advanced and user-friendly. RFID provides more immediate data, requires less manpower and, above all, increases operational efficiency.

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