Pallet-Management-Services - AFM

TRACKING & TRACING
With nearly 350 million RPC trips during 2006, IFCO SYSTEMS
ranks as one of the world’s leading providers of RPCs.
Consequently, the stringent controlling and monitoring of our
pool and the assurance of optimal pool utilization and capacity
utilization are of key strategic importance to us. As a result, we
place significant emphasis and focus on “asset control“ and
the ability to track and trace our RPCs. Today, we already have
control and monitoring systems in place which are constantly
being enhanced and automated by the deployment of new
Tracking & Tracing technologies.
Tracking & Tracing technologies are becoming more important
to our customers. Especially in the food sector, the ability to
trace goods movements has gained increasing significance due
to heightened legislative requirements. Additionally, Tracking &
Tracing technologies also play a key role in the automation and
optimization of logistics processes throughout the entire supply
chain.
Based on these internal and external requirements,
IFCO SYSTEMS developed a high performance Tracking &
Tracing solution. The core of this system is based on a Webbased
Tracking & Tracing software application that is capable
of processing data from a wide range of different identification
technologies, including one- and two dimensional barcode,
color code (optical image recognition) or transponders (RFID).
The identification devices are attached to individual transport
containers and enable the complete Tracking & Tracing of
products within the delivery chain. The choice of identification
technology depends on individual Company requirements and
applications.
We anticipate that RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
technology will become the leading auto identification
technology in the future. However, currently there are certain
applications where the costs for RFID are still too high or
| RPC-MANAGEMENT-SERVICES | TRACKING & TRACING |
the technology is not yet suitable for implementation. In
these situations, the IFCO SYSTEMS solution is open for the
deployment of various technologies and at the same time
supports the parallel utilization of different auto identification
devices or a conversion at a later date. This open system
solution provides the ability to implement a solution today that
may be based on one- and two dimensional barcode or color
code and transition to RFID at some time in the future.
After a successful limited scale pilot project with a meat
container pool in Europe, IFCO SYSTEMS has implemented
its’ Tracking & Tracing System in our US RPC operations.
During 2006, all IFCO SYSTEMS US containers were tagged
with combined color code and barcode labels, allowing each
RPC to be tracked individually. Our US service centers were
equipped with required RPC reading equipment to support this
program. IFCO SYSTEMS is now tracking inbound and outbound
movements of our RPCs, improving our asset control capabilities
and enhancing the management and utilization of our RPCs.
The system may be utilized by our customers on request. We are
currently evaluating the implementation of the system for the
larger European RPC operation.
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