Automatic reel identification by RFID technology in paper reel supply chains: examples from paper mill and sea port environments

The benefits of using passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve supply chain productivity have been proved several times in recent years, throughout the world. The paper industry has not been able to fully exploit these benefits, because of the challenging characteristics of the paper reel itself and the lack of a suitable tag antenna. Now the tag antenna has been developed, and this paper studies the means of using this technology in paper mill and sea port environments. These environments cover a major part of the typical supply chain of paper reels. Pilot tests presented in this paper were performed in realistic industrial circumstances to achieve realistic results. Results proved that paper reels can be reliably identified by passive RFID technology in a real environment. These results bring the large-scale exploitation of RFID in the paper industry one major step closer.