McBride identifies and localizes reusable outer boxes for cleaning products with RFID

The company McBride  – a leading European manufacturer and distributor of cleaning products – was looking for a solution enabling the automatic detection and localisation of the reusable outer boxes throughout the internal process flow. 

Aucxis suggested implementing the standard RFID forklift solution, thanks to which the outer boxes are identified and localised by means of passive RFID technology.  

Detection during the process 

At the start of the project McBride purchased approximately 40 000 durable, preprogrammed UHF RFID label tags. Furthermore, every reusable outer box was equipped with tags.

During the process an empty outer box is placed at a filling station in the production hall. Next, an automatic system fills the outer box with empty bottles. Once filled with the desired number of bottles, the outer box is carried to a chain conveyor for transport outside the production hall. The filling stations and the corresponding chain conveyors serve as fixed RFID detection points and are equipped with RFID readers and antennas. 

Localisation in the storage room thanks to RFID equipment 

In every row of the storage room, passive RFID tags were mounted in the floor in order to mark zones. The forklifts are in turn equipped with our standard hardware kit, enabling to read the floor tags and the RFID labels on the outer boxes.

Both the detections made during the production process and the data from the floor tags in the storage room are processed and transmitted to McBride’s front-end MES software by the Aucxis middleware HERTZ.

Result

Thanks to RFID McBride knows at all times the exact location of the boxes. The automation of the scans also increases the efficiency and reduces the pressure on the logistics employees.

Geert Devarrewaere, OpEx Coach at McBride: “We believe it is important that our production and logistic processes are as efficient and error-free as possible. RFID offers us a simple, durable and affordable solution.”    .

In the future, McBride can equip as many storage locations as desired with RFID and seamlessly link them to each other thanks to the Aucxis middleware HERTZ.