Identifying – Intralogistics

Intralogistics controls material flow between different plant areas – from incoming goods to warehouse, production areas and final assembly to order picking and shipping. To ensure consistent tracking of all process steps (traceability), the materials used need to be identified. This is made possible by RFID data carriers and barcodes which you attach to your containers and pallets. You can also individually identify materials and products using RFID tags.

Application examples

The requirements for data acquisition are many in material flow: Containers must be detected on conveyor lines and products registered on pallets when they leave a factory floor through a door.

Writing and reading of process information, lot and serial numbers for example takes place automatically at various detection points, so that the product is identified at all process steps and can be tracked with no gaps.

This makes the data transparent without exception. This comprehensive transparency means you can optimize the process steps – including material supply from your vendors. Consistent data acquisition also enables targeted corrective measures, so that you can respond immediately to deviations in process quality.

RFID technologies

When selecting the right RFID technology you need to determine whether you have a stationary application with short read distances or a dynamic application with read ranges over several meters, or a need to deteect multiple objects at the same time (multi-tagging.) The stationary application is solved using HF (high-frequency), and the dynamic application with UHF (ultra-high frequency).

Data carriers are available for both technologies in a variety of formats with various properties. When large amounts of data need to be stored directly on the data carrier, HF data carriers with large memory capacity are available.

HF read/write heads are available with or without integrated processor unit in various form factors. Alternately UHF antennas bridge large gaps and are used for multi-tagging.

Processor units allow you to operate up to four read/write heads or antennas at different frequencies and connect to the control level through various fieldbuses.