Issue #155 | July 25, 2008 | by Oliver Hedgepeth
Alaska is a Petri dish for RFID growth. Today’s supply chains are a Petri dish for the spread of salmonella by tomatoes or jalapenos or some other produce.
A unique use of RFID in Alaska, along with fresh produce and other perishable food stocks can arrest such food safety events and provide a footprint of where any food safety or security misstep occurred.
When fresh jalapenos or tomatoes leave their warehouses in Texas or Mexico, and start their journey by refrigerated tractor trailer (called a reefer), there are many opportunities along the boiling hot and humid 2,000 to 6,000 miles of highway to add heat-born problems to raw, frozen, and cooked food.
Boxes of frozen, cold or cool goods and fresh produce often are placed on the hot, concrete loading dock, or a runway, waiting for transport to arrive; or they can sit in the back of the 53-foot trailer as waves of hot air pour through the open trailer door. Or, some unscrupulous driver could drive that truck load of tomatoes 2,000 miles with the reefer cooling unit off. Enter RFID.
Reefer tractors run on diesel fuel; and many use diesel to run the refrigerated trailer. With tractor-trailers averaging five miles per gallon, more for the reefer unit makes it less than 5mpg. With prices soaring more than $5 per gallon of diesel, RFID may be part of the rescue for our food-borne supply chain problems. Who is to know if the driver cut off the reefer unit to save fuel after leaving the originating warehouse, only to cut it back on hours before arriving at the final destination?
Keeping it fresh with RFID
Sara Benton, an independent owner-operator of a reefer from Chester, Virginia, says, “I leave my reefer unit working even when the reefer has to sit and idle for up to three hours at the main loading dock.” She ensures her produce and meats are kept at a constant temperature by a series of thermometers, dashboard readouts, and her experimental use of active RFID tags within her 20 foot truck. But, she is concerned that some drivers may be tempted to save several thousand dollars on these long, hot runs.
Today, passive RFID’s tags are swimming along the supply chain with Alaska Wild Salmon to stores in Massachusetts and other points east. Passive RFID time and temperature tags are tracking fresh produce to the far corners of Alaska.
Don Harman, of Tednologies, Inc., has created a unique, LD-3 refrigerated container laced with active RFID TurboTag T-700 temperature tags. The LD-3 is a storage container – an igloo to us in Alaska. This igloo is unique in internal design, sporting built-in RFID tag systems and portable RFID holders. This TEDSBOX (Tracking Environmental Deviation System) is an actual LD-3 used to carry cargo on trucks, trains, ships and for airlines, such as Northern Air Cargo or Alaska Airlines. It can hold up to 106 cubic feet of goods. It is easy to handle with a forklift from any side; but compared to similar LD-3’s, this new model will allow for refrigeration of more than 2,400 pounds of cargo to be contained in a zero CO2 footprint system.
Fewer touchpoints for contamination to occur
The power source is a unique blend of new technology batteries and compressor systems. If it sits on a loading dock, runway or cargo hold, the product inside is safe, secure. There is no need to repack the shipment in other containers, risking the possibility of contamination or exceeding the temperatures desired. In Alaska, this same secure container can be used to transfer seafood from fisherman to fork.
This is the latest in a growing line of self-contained, RFID-based technologies to enter the marketplace. With the increasing cost of fuel and surcharges; the food scare over transporting tomatoes and jalapenos, the emphasis for controlling the CO2 footprint, the escalating fuel- carriers are demanding to carry containers, and the resulting price per item of the cargo carried, this unique RFID container will revolutionize cargo movement.
The 13.56 MHz RFID tags used by Benton and Harman are a semi-flexible, credit-card sized tag, ISO 15693-3 compliant. The readers can be handheld or stationary. The temperature ranges used so far are -13o F to 95oF. The tags cost about $10 and can store up to 700 time and temperature readings.
The TEDSBOX is now being used to fly produce to the Alaskan Native villages, such as Emmonak, along the coastal regions. The return flights have about 2,200 pounds of Wild Alaskan King Salmon, no problem for the 28o to 38oF range required for these perishables.
This and other RFID temperature technology, such as Boeing’s RFID use at -60o to -80oF in RFID Street 153, is paving the way to cleaner food supply chains, safer foods, and keeping pace with the CO2 footprint drives defining today’s climate change debates. Along with other RFID technology uses in the oil industry, pipeline industry, Alaska railroad, shipping, and grocery deliveries – in this Alaskan Petri dish, RFID growth is taking root.
Oliver Hedgepeth is author of RFID Metrics and an Associate Professor of Logistics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. afwoh@cbpp.uaa.alaska.edu
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