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NewStar opens nation’s first RFID produce testing center
Salinas, California, September 20, 2004 - NewStar Fresh Foods LLC, based here, has just opened the nation’s first Radio Frequency Identification cold-chain produce testing center at its Salinas facility.
The testing center is a small area within NewStar’s 50,000-square-foot processing facility and cooler, which opened in November and attaches to the company’s main office building.
The testing center is a big step in produce because RFID — an electronic record of all movement of products through the supply chain — will become standard use in supply chain management and in tracing products.
Sausalito, CA-based QLM Consulting is the consulting firm selected to operate the facility in conjunction with Michigan State University. The company will operate the facility on behalf of Eden Prairie, MN-based C.H. Robinson Worldwide and NewStar, one of C.H. Robinson’s preferred providers. The RFID project manager for NewStar is Steve McShane, the company’s director of new product development and food safety.
“It’s our [PMA] goal to share RFID answers and drive toward an industrywide solution,” said Michael McCartney, a principal with QLM Consulting and chairman of Produce Marketing Association’s RFID produce action group. Companies will be able to arrange for their own testing at the RFID center for a price, he said.
Jim Lemke, vice president of produce for C.H. Robinson Worldwide, said, “Once we get the protocol read properly and get the right hardware in [the testing center], we’ll try to figure out what information we’ll try to capture.”
Mr. McShane said that NewStar is excited to play a leadership role. “There is no question this [RFID] technology will revolutionize how the industry does business,” he said.
With regard to supply chain management in produce, Wal-Mart is taking a lead position in RFID application. The chain’s top 100 suppliers are scheduled to use RFID tags in 2005.
“All Wal-Mart suppliers will need to ship RFID-enabled products by the end of 2006,” Mr. McCartney said. Joining C.H. Robinson Worldwide are two Salinas-based companies — Tanimura & Antle and Fresh Express — and Lo Bue Bros. Inc. in Lindsay, CA, as the companies that volunteered to ship RFID-enabled product to Wal-Mart on Wal-Mart’s RFID timetable. Beginning in January, they will ship product to Wal-Mart’s distribution supercenter in Cleburne, TX.
Wal-Mart has asked C.H. Robinson to focus on citrus, and bagged oranges in cases were tested the week of Sept. 13 at the RFID testing center. Lo Bue Bros. supplied the oranges.
The Albertson’s supermarket chain soon will announce its timetable for RFID use, Mr. McCartney said. In the near future, other supermarket chains will announce their RFID timetable as well. Now is the time for produce companies to mobilize an internal team to prepare to deliver RFID-enabled products, he said.
In the first generation of RFID, manufacturers of tags and readers developed products to read only their tags and readers. Generation two of RFID — which will be acknowledged in October — features interoperability. Generation two will test combinations of readers, antennae and tags to find out what works best by commodity group.
“Reading citrus is different than reading stone fruit or berries,” Mr. McCartney said. Distinctions involve density of the product, water content and packaging, such as clamshell packaging for berries. Citrus has the highest water content, which can impede a RFID signal; stone fruit has a pit that can reflect energy sent to it, also impeding a good reading.
“A company’s tag may work well in one place but not another,” Mr. McCartney said.
In generation two, read ranges will increase by as much as 40 percent, up to eight to 10 feet. This will allow a buyer greater flexibility to mix and match and optimize for the plant environment, Mr. McCartney said. EPC Global, the standards organization for RFID, will ratify generation two of RFID in October, Mr. McCartney said. Manufacturers will need six months or longer to come to market with products after ratification of generation two, he said.
But the produce industry will first start with a “generation one-plus” RFID product that can be later transitioned to generation two. For now, only pallets and cases will employ RFID technology.
In addition to interoperability of tags and readers, goals of generation two include 1,500 reads per second and standardization of verification protocols.
RFID technology will allow grower-shippers to keep track of their product to the minute at numerous points along the way including point of sale, instead of using educated guesses as they do now. For instance, they’ll know exactly when their product was put on a supermarket sales floor.
Supermarkets can boost their bottom line by using smart shelves to monitor on-shelf availability, Mr. McCartney said.
“RFID creates a whole new set of analytics,” he said. “We can take the timeline and layer it over the freshness cycle. We’ll identify errors with fact, not fiction.”
Store managers will work more closely with suppliers and supply chain managers, Mr. McCartney added, and ultimately the industry will sell more produce because it will manage freshness.
As well, traceback efficiency will be greatly enhanced through RFID technology, Mr. McCartney said. “We can do a traceback in minutes,” Mr. McCartney said. “You have a serial number unique to the case.”
With RFID, every case loaded onto a truck is identified, compared with a purchase order that states how many cases of a certain commodity is in the load.
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