Direct identification of the stored goods

STILL RFID technolgy enables the trucks to detect thier own position and indicate a lot of information to navigate the truck. Detours are avoided this way. In addition a whole range of safety features is available. It is, for example, possible to reduce the speed of the truck in certain areas of the facility, to limit the lift height of the truck or to switch the lighting on automatically. Also communication of the trucks with traffic light systems or with automatic gates is possible just as surveilance of one-way roads. After registration of goods at goods receipt the unambiguous allocation of the goods with the pallet the goods are indirectly identified. During each internal transport of the pallet the system registers the change of location and updates the location of the pallet in the database.

Precondition for this are special tags, also called transponders, installed in the floor at regular intervals of about one metre to make sure the location of the truck can be detected at any point.

Respective installations can easily be made in warehouses and facilities already in operation. Customers using the new STILL technology enjoy considerable benefits: Many scans can be eliminated because the goods are registered by the truck. This way not only the time needed for manual scanning of goods is saved but also the work progress is not interrupted. Altogether the utilization of the truck increases because the time otherwise used for manual scanning during the course of a working day may well add up to two hours. The well legible terminals transmit the data to the STILL material management system (MMS) by wireless LAN. The system is also provided with data on the location and position of the truck by the same means.

GREAT INCREASE OF SATIETY IN THE WAREHOUSE

Information on the lift height and the load distance, speed and hydraulic movements as well as the location of the truck are interconnected by a special CAN bus protocol. How does this affect the concrete situation in the warehouse? At crossroads, i.e. places of potential accidents the speed of the truck is reduced and after the vehicle has passed the crossing the speed reduction is released. This automatic speed reduction can also be applied to narrow passageways. Travel direction surveillance controls access to sensitive areas and access to one-way roads can be controlled the same way. All of this adds up to a considerable gain in safety for the warehouse.

An additional aspect is the positive effect of active navigation support. The STILL system operates similar to the navigation systems in road vehicles and indicates the directions to be followed by arrows in the display. For new drivers or temporary workers it will be much easier to find their way around. In addition the central system knows the location of each truck and can assign new jobs to the truck most suitable.

The work done by STILL so far has shown that RFID technology makes considerable progress in the flow of material and in safety possible. However, there still is a great demand for research to be done in this area to find optimum solutions, especially as far as the flow of information between the transported goods and the loading aids on one side and the industrial truck on the other side is concerned. This is why a pool of industrial partners including STILL has initiated the research project "IdentProLog". It is patronized by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) [Federal Ministry of Education and Research] and is a part of the program "Forschung für die Produktion von morgen" [Research for the production of tomorrow]. It is scheduled for a duration of three years.