Three-Level RFID System for Architectural Concrete Panels Tracking

Tracking of goods in production and distribution lines is required by manufacturers, retailers, and customers, as well. Companies usually control the quality of their production in the manufacturing phase, but products can also be controlled along the distribution and transportation steps, before they are delivered to customers. The main objective of the project described on this paper is to develop a tracking system for architectural concrete panels. The system should enable the traceability, both downstream, allowing to know the origin of the panels and which processes were followed for any panel installed in a building, and upstream, so it is possible to further analyze the processes followed by the panel to be installed, including distribution and transportation. Therefore, the planning can be performed for optimizing processes and resources, and achieving an appropriate distribution of the timing, costs, etc. An auto managed three-level based RFID system is proposed in this paper in order to provide an efficient solution for the real-time monitoring (RTMS) of special loads, such as architectural concrete. The solution has been implemented by means of RFID passive and active tags and wirelessly communicated readers, corresponding to three levels of the supply chain. In the highest level, a wireless network connecting all the readers based on ZigBee technology has been implemented. This network is also connected to a GPRS system. Thereby, the main advantage of the proposed system is its ability to provide real-time localization of products (RTLS) all over the world.