BLG Logistics, a worldwide logistics firm, is implementing a pilot that employs EPCGen 2 passive RFID tags and GPS technology to track the locations of rolltrailers at a seaport terminal it operates in Bremerhaven, Germany. The rolltrailers are loaded with heavy, odd-sized and extra-large equipment or machinery, such as locomotives, yachts or building material. Special tug vehicles equipped with heavy-duty engines are used to move the trailers onto and off of roll-on/roll-off cargo ships, and then to tow them ashore to a storage yard or a loading area for overland transport of the trailers' cargo.
Wolf Lampe, BLG Logistics' director of seaport technologies, and Anne Schweizer, a researcher at the Bremer Institute for Production and Logistics, a scientific and engineering research institute at the University of Bremen, said that terminal personnel often spend excess time and burn fuel unnecessarily while attempting to locate a particular rolltrailer in the yard.
Perhaps the pilot can save on labor and fuel costs.
