Intelligent Network Seminar / RFID

By accident I discovered this seminar on the event agenda. I was asked to do a usability test on the subscribe page and I subscribed for the event without knowing what it was. Afterwards I got a mail for confirmation and I saw that it was a seminar about RFID.

The seminar took place in a hangar on the Rijnkaai in Antwerp. It first started with a walking dinner. You could also go outside on the terrace to enjoy the first real sunshine of the year. After having dinner and meeting the executives we started with the real deal.

First we got an intro about what RFID was and more important, why it is more then a technology. RFID already exists since World War 2, but the real applications and the possibilities are changed and now very usable for companies. Also the possibilities what you can do with the data you retrieve from the RFID are very usable in the optimizing of the Supply Chain Management and Transport Management.

After the break we got a real live demo of a transportation truck that used RFID to make sure the right packets are delivered at the right place. They simulated the loading and unloading of a truck and what happens when there are mistakes.

After the break I went to 2 case studies of companies that already used RFID in their business to improve their workflow. The first study was about the company Kraft, which sells and transports a lot of fresh food like Philadelphia cheese and Mayonnaise. As for food it's very important to be delivered on time with a temperature check, it was a very vivid and useful example.

The second case study was about Sernam, a transport & logistics company. This example used RFID to track down all the packets and see where things go wrong, packets get lost, etc... They also used the loading and unloading possibilities of RFID which we saw in the live demo with the transportation truck.

To end the event there was a last presentation about the entire conclusion that could be made. They also showed a movie about a real working process from making an order to delivery at home. With this movie there was also a live demo of

• a computer taking an order
• automatically printing a label with the RFID tag with the information on it
• sticking it on the product
• driving it to the right truck
• loading it on the truck
• unloading it off the truck

Unfortunately because of problems with the internet connection only a part could be shown. Still I got a good picture on how it works and what the possibilities are.

This event has really helped me with understanding what RFID really is, what it does and what the possibilities are to help optimizing a company on different issues.