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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 5 Nov 05 | |
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ARTICLE
INFRASTRUCTURE TECHNOLOGY: Business Tunes into its Products
By Graeme O'Neill
Bland assurances that the urgently needed goods your company ordered are ‘in the system’ are the bane of consumer goods manufacturers and their customers worldwide. But revolution is in the air. Researchers at CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology have developed an internet-based radio-frequency identification (RFID) system that for the first time will allow manufacturers of fast-moving consumer goods and their customers to track consignments through the complete supply chain, from production line to delivery, anywhere in the world. Dr John Mo’s team assembled the system using off-the-shelf hardware and software from Sun Microsystems, after winning a $200,000 R&D contract under the Commonwealth Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts’ Information Technology On Line (ITOL) scheme in July.
The system is a platform technology, whose potential will become clear with use. It is based around inexpensive, printable electronic labels that transmit the identity of a consignment and its location when interrogated by a fixed RF reading station or hand-held RF device up to four metres away. The data is automatically uploaded to VeriSign’s central server in the US, where manufacturers and their customers can access them via the internet, using secure codes. Murray Fane, information systems manager with pallet supplier CHEP Australia, says the company is using Class 1 tags supplied by CSIRO to track a number of pallets through the supply chain, using hand-held readers. Mr Fane says the tags are equivalent to electronic number plates for each pallet. Bulk consignments will employ the pallet tag for tracking, but customers will have the option to add their own, rewritable tags to cartons on the pallets, for individual tracking after they are broken apart and sent to different stores. Dr Mo says the system demonstrates how electronic information can help companies to do business globally. “Currently, we know of no RFID system that crosses company boundaries in the way that ours does,” he says.
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The CSIRO team has been field testing the system with a consortium of Australian and international companies, including Procter & Gamble, Visy Industries, Gillette, Sun Microsystems, Metcash, Linfox, Chep, VeriSign, GS1 (formerly EAN), AFGC and two small-to-medium enterprises – honey producer Capilano and fruit and vegetable exporter the Nugan Group.
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