The solution was provided by Axios Mobile Assets, a manufacturer of lightweight plastic pallets, to better manage the loading of trucks and transportation to stores, based on data indicating when each pallet was packed, loaded onto a vehicle and delivered.
J.D. Smith has been investigating RFID solutions for several years. In late 2010, the company began testing the use of RFID-enabled pallets at its own warehouse. Six months ago, however, the firm began its first full-scale pilot with a customer - a pet-product retailer that has asked to remain unnamed. Each 47-pound soy bio-resin reusable pallet has four passive EPCGen 2 ultrahigh-frequency RFID tags - one in each of the pallet's four corners. The four tags are linked to the same pallet in software residing on a Web-based server hosted by Axios, which shares all RFID read data with J.D. Smith.
