Your packaging goes into the chain. And part of it never comes back.
Pallets, roll containers and crates are bought and sit on your balance sheet. What is missing is a record that keeps track of where they are on its own. So every year part of it is written off because nobody can point to where it went.
Outside, in the rain and against metal: those are the hardest conditions for RFID. That is exactly why we test them.
Sound familiar?
Carrier management is almost always about this.
- Pallets get parked somewhere temporarily and that location is never recorded.
- Carriers stay behind at the customer and the return comes months later.
- Every year roll containers are written off and nobody can trace where it goes wrong.
- There is a packaging balance per customer that both parties dispute.
- During a peak there are too few carriers while a stack sits somewhere.
- Carriers sit too long at an interim spot inside, and that only shows up once an order is waiting on one.
What it costs
What lost carriers cost
Carriers in circulation
Loss per year
%
Price per unit
euros
Per year
4,320 euros
With the share of the theoretical gain you actually achieve:
- Conservative
- 1,728 euros
- Expected
- 2,592 euros
- Potential
- 3,456 euros
Worked example based ontwelve hundred carriers, eight percent loss per year, forty-five euros apiece. The loss rate differs a great deal per chain, so do fill in your own figure. Not a measurement at a customer. The numbers are adjustable: put your own situation in and the outcome follows along.
Give the carrier itself a number
Do not track the contents, track the carrier. It goes hundreds of rounds and deserves a label that survives them.
01 / A label that survives the chain
A hard tag, screwed, riveted or glued on, resistant to rain, frost and the wash line. More expensive per piece than a paper label, but it lasts hundreds of rounds.
02 / Reading points at the door
At the dock or the gate a reading point registers what goes out and what comes back, without anyone counting.
03 / Balance per customer or location
In STOCKflow you see how many carriers are where, and since when. A packaging dispute becomes a printout.
The main objection
Common objection
“Does RFID really work on metal and outside in the rain?”
Not with an ordinary label. Metal reflects the signal and water dampens it, so a paper tag on a roll container in the rain works badly. There are hard tags with a spacer that can handle it; they cost more and have a shorter read range, but they do the job. Whether that is enough for your carriers and your dock depends on the shape, the stacking and the driving speed. That is exactly what we measure in the Proof of Value, including a day of bad weather.
What it does and what it does not do
What it does and what it does not do
Wel
- Registering carriers in bulk at a doorway or dock
- Keeping a balance per customer, location or route
- Seeing how long a carrier has been standing somewhere, and reporting it once that gets too long
- Locating items on your own site with a handheld
Niet
- Tracking carriers outside your own reading points, on the road for example
- Reading reliably on metal pallets and roll containers without a matching tag
- Giving an exact position on a yard or at a customer
- Preventing loss that starts after the carrier passed your last reading point
Two things up front. Metal disturbs the signal, so a roll container needs a tag made for that. And outside, rain, frost and sunlight play their part. Both are solvable, but not with the cheapest label, and the read range is shorter there. We test that before anything is ordered.
How we prove it: a small, paid Proof of Value
One type of carrier, one route or one dock. We label a limited series and measure how many of them are read reliably.
Scope
- One carrier type: pallet, roll container or crate
- One dock, gate or route
- Hard tags, chosen for material and surroundings
- Readability while passing, in the rain too
- Departure and return side by side over the test period
Go or no-go
You see the read rate per situation, including in bad weather and with full stacking. If it stays below what you need, that is the outcome and it stops there.
Frequently asked questions
Can we also see where a pallet is at the customer?
Not without reading points at that location. What you do see is that the carrier left your site, when, and on which route. For most packaging disputes that is the point where it goes wrong.
How do you attach a tag to a pallet?
On wooden pallets with a nail or a staple, on plastic carriers screwed on, glued on or into a recess. Gluing uses industrial structural adhesive and not a strip of tape. It has to survive a forklift and a wash line, so the mounting matters as much as the tag.
What does a hard tag like that cost?
Considerably more than a paper label, but it lasts hundreds of rounds. On a carrier of forty-five euros that you otherwise write off at eight percent a year, the sum is quickly made. On cheap single-use packaging it works out the other way.
We mainly use our carriers internally, does this still pay off?
Yes, only the gain shifts. It is no longer about less loss but about a process that keeps track of itself: which zone a carrier is in, since when, and a report once it has been there longer than agreed. You steer the floor today instead of finding out afterwards that something was left standing.
Does this work with a moving forklift?
Often it does, but speed and stacking decide the read rate. A gate people drive through at walking pace reads better than a dock people race through. We measure that during the test period on your own dock.