German beverage company Gerlosteiner's unique warehouse RFID application system has achieved a return on investment

German bottled non-alcoholic beverage and mineral water producer Gerolsteiner Brunnen used RFID systems two years ago to comply with EU regulations on food and beverage tracking (EU 178/2002). According to the company, they have now recovered half of their return on investment, and RFID systems basically do not require routine maintenance.
In Gerolstein, Germany, as many as 20,000 pallets enter and exit the Gerolsteiner distribution center every day. In April 2005, the company began adopting an RFID system. Unlike the usual way of attaching RFID tags to pallets, the company embedded passive 136 kHz tags into the floor of the distribution center.
Due to extensive hardware and frequency testing by Gerolsteiner, the company and integrator SAP SI took a total of one year to complete the project. The company needed to find a frequency band that would allow the forklift truck loaded with the beverage to run well and not affect the label when the beverage spilled onto the floor.
Gerolsteiner finally decided to use a 136 kHz label in a glass bottle - commonly used for animal tracking. The label (3 cm long and 3.5 mm wide) was placed in the floor and covered with a layer of plaster. The tags are supplied by TI using a proprietary air interface protocol.
Each pallet is affixed with an EAN 128 barcode. When the pallet is forked, the barcode scanner installed on the forklift scans and identifies the barcode. When the forklift truck drives the label on the floor, the reader mounted on the bottom of the forklift reads the label. The computer system updates the pallet location in real time by associating the barcode number with the ID number of the RFID tag. “Now, we know the inventory of the distribution center and can quickly locate the location of the required pallets,” said Roland Keul, head of logistics at Gerolsteiner.
Installing an RFID reader at the bottom of the forklift to read the RFID tags on the floor Gerolsteiner has embedded 2,500 tags in the floor of the distribution center. Approximately 5 labels are used for each row of shelves. In the area before each truck loading area (identified area, the area is equivalent to a large truck), 33 labels are embedded, and the labels are spaced 1 meter apart along the loading area. This allows the forklift operator to operate the forklift to a point to read at least one of the tags.
When it arrives at the loading area, the truck enters its assigned parking area. The label is embedded in the floor near the parking area, covering one side of the truck. The forklift driver loads the goods from that side, and each time they put a pallet to the truck, they pass at least one label. The identification codes of the labels in the same area are the same.
The forklift operator receives the bill of lading through the computer on the vehicle, for example, loading apple juice from two pallets and mineral water from one pallet onto a truck. The computer identifies the ID code of the assigned truck and the truck allocation parking area, and combines this information with the serial number of the order number.
The forklift operator receives the loading slipper truck through the computer on the vehicle and the operator drives to the warehouse to take the required pallet. Following the route, the forklift reader reads the floor label and notifies the system of the position of the forklift. If the driver enters the wrong pallet, a warning message is displayed on the screen.
The forklift operator takes the required pallets in the warehouse and sends them to the loading area. The driver then removes the pallets from the warehouse shelves and sends them to the loading area. The forklift's barcode scanner identifies the pallet, and the forklift's reader reads the outgoing floor RFID tag, and the data is connected via a local area network and sent to Gerolsteiner's SAP system. The system updates the data, indicating which pallets are shipped to which customer, and achieves the EU's traceable requirements.
Prior to the installation of the system, Gerolsteiner relied solely on barcodes to track pallets and was unable to identify which pallets were sent to which particular customer. In this way, the company had to hire dozens of workers to manually scan the barcode.
“The company’s annual labor cost for bar code scanning is $366,000; this project costs about $1.47 million, including software upgrades and non-RFID hardware costs, such as barcode scanners. The company is expected to be in the next two years. The investment cost will be fully recovered,” Keul said.

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