1. RFID and the Cold Chain
Food safety is critical in temperature sensitive goods including produce, fish, meat and dairy
products as well as medical products like drugs, blood, vaccines, organs, plasma and tissues.
There are two big challenges in maintaining safety in temperature sensitive goods. First, internal
temperatures can change rapidly if external conditions such as temperature and humidity are
present during transport. The second is maintaining profitability within the cold chain in a highly
competitive market.
Today, there are innovative real-time cold-chain monitoring system solutions that help deal with
these challenges, and RFID is one of them. RFID is a system that uses small radio frequency
identification devices for identification and tracking purposes. An RFID tagging system includes
the tag itself, a read/write device, and a host system
application for data collection, processing, and
transmission. RFID technologies are used in the cold chain
as an alternative to bar code technology in order to
improve performance.
The role of RFID in cold chain is:
to track the geographical position of temperature sensitive goods by using a unique electronic
product code (EPC) or other barcode alternatives;
to respond to the “real-time” criteria by identification of store data and to transmit this
information before products are damaged;
to collect a wide range of information like temperature, humidity, shock/vibration, light,
radiation, and concentration of gases;
to reduce out-of-stock by sending a notification when the critical level is reached;
to increase the productivity and facilitation of JIT principles by decreasing lost stock;
to minimize the response time and the labor cost
RFID is a technology that improves visibility and transparency in the cold chain.
In addition, RFID can help companies increase their competitive advantage and improve their
customer’s trust. The efficiency of RFID depends on its ability to track and trace each individual
product in a way that can provide critical information in order to maintain the proper temperature
and safety. Issues facing RFID are ways to track frozen products shelf life remotely and
developing multi-sensing RFID nanosensors.