Using tools: Making sense of the supply chain

RFID was supposed to be the answer to all of the problems in the supply chain. Today, it's emerging as just another tool in the technologist's tool box.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/1/2007

“RFID middleware is extinct. The intelligent sensor network is born.”

That headline stopped me cold the other day when I came across it on Supply Chain Daily. Any time someone declares an emerging technology extinct, you want to learn more.

Now, Louis Sirico, a Silicon Valley technologist and co-founder of IndustryWizards.com, wasn’t declaring RFID dead on arrival. Rather, he was declaring the layer of software specifically created to manage RFID data DOA. Instead, he argued that perceptions about RFID need to change. “A RFID reader is actually a sensor and it needs to be treated as one,” Sirico wrote. “Reading a RFID tag is a sensor input, basically the equivalent of a barcode scan.”

In other words, RFID isn’t a silver bullet. It’s just one of many tools converging to automatically communicate data across the supply chain.

Convergence
A day or so later, I spoke to Richard Ungerbuehler, the chief science officer for Sky-Trax, a provider of fleet management and real-time location systems, about Total-Trax, an integrated solution they will be unveiling in the coming months.

The idea here is to combine a variety of sensing technologies to automate processes like receiving, putaway and picking in a warehouse or distribution center without traditional bar codes or RFID. In theory, we’ll get a new level of control over processes.

“We’re trying to provide fully automated data collection and real-time tracking from a lift trucks,” Ungerbuehler said. “And, we’re doing it without hand-held scanners or manual scans.”

What makes it work? 
First is a solution Sky-Trax calls IPS, or indoor positioning system. That’s an inside-the-four walls version of GPS that uses camera-based imaging systems to read location markers in a facility’s ceiling.

• Next is a sensor that detects the height of a lift truck’s forks. That tells the system on what row a pallet was putaway.
• A second camera positioned on the truck automatically reads a 2D license plate barcode on the pallet, which marries the pallet or a container to the data received from the other sensors.
• Finally, a pallet detecting sensor verifies that a pallet is onboard the forks or not. That sensor confirms that a pallet was put away or retrieved.
• All of that information is fed to a small on-board computer that analyzes the data and communicates with a warehouse management system.

“What we’ve tried to do is create a network of sensors that will plug and play as a system and truly automate data collection,” says Ungerbuehler.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure how many facilities need the level of real-time data that Sky-Trax intends to supply. But what is clear is that moving forward, we’re unlikely to see one killer app, like RFID, doing everything in the plant and warehouse. Instead, technologies are coming together to solve problems that have eluded the industry for years.