Press Report

A central localisation technology relieves a timely warning by exceeding the maximum temperature of sensitive foods

(Logistik & Fördertechnik 01.2007) Elgar Fleisch, director of the Institute for Technology Management at the University St. Gallen, feels confident about one thing. "Up to 30% of goods for the food industry which have to be refrigerated, nowadays become inedible during the transport," says Fleisch. These heavy losses pose a challenge for the monitoring of cold chains. The central recording of important data often still causes problems here. As a consequence there is a huge information gap during the monitoring of actual road transports.

By now, the use of radio frequency identification technology (RFID) together with integrated sensor technology has established itself for the monitoring. However, this method alone does not help companies to run a prompt escalation management because the identified data often are not directly available for evaluation. "The use of RFID combined with intelligent tracking technologies for the Online process monitoring is an important step towards the optimisation of processes," remarks Fleisch. Good software solutions offer the possibility to see via Internet all the necessary information which is needed for the monitoring of the cold chain, i.e., data are provided for all tasks which are related to the planning, execution and monitoring of transports. At best, the connection to such systems takes place via a standard browser. These applications furthermore provide transport-specific functionalities as for instance an automatic escalation management.

The Austrian software house inet-logistics examines the use of RFID in combination with the tracking technologies GPS and GSM together with a research institute called "VResearch" and in cooperation with Gebrüder Weiss as well as the RFID-manufacturer Identec Solutions.