Car specialist takes the RFID route
Car logistics company Assistor is using RFID to track vehicles in harbours and warehouses.
The system, developed by Digia, uses passive RFID technology to identify vehicles quickly and reliably. When unloaded from ships, vehicles are equipped with UPM Raflatac’s UHF Gen2 DogBone RFID tags.
An exact warehouse location is assigned to each vehicle so that they are easily located with a hand-held RFID reader. A total of 250 readers are used by the system. Each RFID tag carries information about all actions related to the vehicle during storage and production.
Assistor will deliver around 370,000 vehicles to Finland, the Baltic countries and Russia this year. It has vehicle terminals in Hanko and Paldiski and spare parts terminals in Espoo, Helsinki and Vantaa.
Tom Suvanto, deputy managing director at Assistor, said: “Maximal use of the real-time data from our processes gives us a competitive advantage. Furthermore, managing large vehicle warehouses and correctly locating vehicles has until now presented a major challenge.”
“UPM Raflatac’s UHF Gen2 DogBone RFID tags are designed to function even in the challenging weather conditions that vehicles might face during transport,” said Mikko Nikkanen, RFID business development director at UPM Raflatac. “Vehicles may be covered with snow or encounter heavy rain, for instance, both being conditions in which barcode technology no longer works.”
