Sustainable tracking of returnable transport items using RFID

Since January 2023, Germany has had a statutory requirement for reusable packaging in the food service and hospitality sector. Businesses that offer beverages and food for takeout or delivery must provide reusable packaging as an alternative to single-use plastic packaging. This requirement does not yet apply to industry. There, single-use packaging and load carriers – whether made of wood, plastic, paper or metal – are still common practice. Obviously, the environmental impact of this approach is problematic. Plastic packaging and stretch wrap in particular, which is wrapped around loads like oversized plastic wrap, is rarely recyclable. In addition, single-use packaging often fails to meet the hygiene requirements of the food and consumer goods industries.

Returnable transport items as a sustainable logistics solution  

It does not always take a change in the law to do things better, as Recalo GmbH in Laatzen near Hanover demonstrates. “At the core of our business is the pooling of returnable transport items,” explains Managing Director Daniel van der Vorst. “Sustainability is central to our business model. That means optimal utilization of our truck capacity thanks to returnable transport items that are designed for truck load capacities. The goal is to achieve maximum output with minimal handling and transport effort – in other words, to provide our customers with the best possible service while using as few resources as possible.”

Efficiency advantage in the pooling system

In logistics, reusable load carriers are often referred to as returnable transport items, or RTIs for short. Customers make use of Recalo’s full-service offering: the pool operator delivers cleaned and reconditioned RTIs to its customers. Those customers use the RTIs to ship their own supplier products and components. After the RTIs have been shipped, Recalo organizes the return transport of the transport items and handles all subsequent processes.

The customer therefore avoids having to invest in RTIs and has nothing to do with managing, cleaning or repairing returnable transport items. Demand spikes can also be covered at short notice. In the pooling system, RTIs remain in continuous circulation and are never left unused for long. In turn, Recalo can organize the return of the pallets very efficiently thanks to its dense network of logistics partners and customers, and keep its trucks optimally utilized.

Customized transport solution

The company also develops customer-specific load carriers, such as a folding plastic box with an intermediate shelf that halves the pressure on the packages below, preventing unsightly deformation and problems during automated unloading. This box is based on the footprint of a Euro pallet and, when unfolded, is almost one meter tall. After unloading, it can be folded and then, while keeping the same footprint,– is only 30 centimeters high, including the intermediate shelf. The boxes are designed so that the truck cargo space can always be loaded up to the load height limit – both with unfolded and folded boxes.

Another reason for the low CO₂ footprint is the long service life of the boxes, which remain in use far longer than wooden pallets. Wood also has limited hygiene performance. This, along with uncertainty about how a wooden pallet was previously used, means that wooden pallets can be used only to a very limited extent in hygiene-sensitive and consumer goods applications. Recalo has further extended the service life of its boxes by using replaceable runners. These are the first components to wear out and can simply be replaced instead of discarding the entire box. This increases the RTI’s service life and reduces the CO₂ footprint of the overall service to a minimum.

RTI pooling reduces tied-up capital  

Since its founding in 2017, Recalo has positioned its products and services at the intersection of two global megatrends: sustainability and digitalization. RTI pooling is particularly attractive for retail chains and for manufacturers of food, consumer goods and pharmaceuticals. In a typical use case, a producer of packaging trays for fresh meat places an order with Recalo. It receives the load carriers and uses them to supply its customer – the meat processor. Normally, the packaging manufacturer would then have to ensure the timely return of the load carriers so it can serve its next customer. This is time-consuming and, due to the limited number of load carriers, also inefficient – and it would tie up capital in the load carriers, which would spend much of their time sitting in storage because demand for RTIs can fluctuate significantly. In a pooling system, customers use only as many load carriers as they currently need. When demand spikes, Recalo proactively supports its customers with additional RTIs. The packaging-tray manufacturer orders the RTIs from Recalo, loads them and ships its goods to the meat producers, where Recalo picks the load carriers up again. Because Recalo serves not just a single supplier but numerous customers, the company can organize and plan return transport far more efficiently than any individual participant in this loop could on its own. Recalo also cleans the load carriers, handles maintenance and ensures that only intact RTIs remain in the pool. Thanks to its broad customer base, the company can offer its RTI pool not only in Germany, but currently in 13 other European countries as well.

Asset management challenge

Recalo must continuously keep track of where its customers’ RTIs are currently located. The company has to ensure that each customer has enough containers to ship its goods. It is obvious that an RTI pool of more than 90,000 units can only be operated economically if the units are recorded fully automatically. Managing Director Daniel van der Vorst quickly ruled out identification based solely on barcodes: “The most important decision criteria for an RFID system were high data quality, fast bulk reads and the ability to automate our processes.” When hundreds of boxes are shipped to customers, the items have to be recorded in bulk – something that is virtually impossible with barcodes. On the other hand, barcodes have the advantage that targeted scanning of individual codes with barcode scanners is often easier than with RFID readers.

RFID system for end-to-end process transparency

Recalo therefore uses a hybrid solution and equips its pallets with labels that combine a barcode and an RFID UHF tag. Regardless of which technology is used at a given site, every Recalo load carrier can be identified by the system clearly and efficiently thanks to the hybrid tag. Van der Vorst first spoke with the track-and-trace specialists at Turck Vilant Systems at a trade show. “I immediately realized that Turck Vilant understood our processes and the challenges we face. It was important to us to have a partner with an international presence to ensure that our international sites are fully supported,” the managing director explains.

Turck Vilant Systems developed a complete system for Recalo consisting of RFID read/write points operated using the Turck Vilant Client middleware. These are used to perform key actions such as checking an RTI into or out of the pool. The data is then processed by the Turck Vilant Visibility Manager. This server application performs fully automated shipment verification in close communication with Recalo’s ERP system. This full integration of shipment verification with the ERP system was critical to the solution’s success.

Seamless tracking throughout the entire logistics cycle  

Recalo’s processes – from shipping to customers, to tracking the boxes throughout the circulation loop, to their return – are implemented as fully paperless workflows. At the Conditioning Center in Riedstatt near Frankfurt, the RTIs are cleaned, temporarily stored and repaired if necessary. When unloading a truck, employees move the stacks of boxes through an RFID gate using forklifts, where their identification numbers are recorded. At the gate, employees can immediately confirm whether all boxes have been correctly recorded. As a result, staff in Riedstatt are able to load a complete truck in less than half an hour. Up to 20 compactly stacked boxes are recorded simultaneously in a single forklift pass through the RFID gate and loaded onto the trucks.

The process was implemented as a fully digital workflow. For example, the system knows the height of the trailer assigned to the truck being loaded and tells employees how tall the box stacks should be to make optimal use of the available load capacity. When the requested boxes pass through the RFID gate, the system not only records all tags, but also simultaneously checks whether the required stack height has been reached. Using the direction-gate algorithm, the system also determines the direction in which the boxes pass through the gate. Anyone who has seen how fully a truck can be packed with Recalo’s standardized system boxes can immediately tell that achieving this level of efficiency manually would be difficult.

RTI pool always in the “sweet spot”

To ensure the entire process chain is captured seamlessly, RTI arrivals at Recalo’s customer premises must also be recorded. This data is transmitted to Recalo’s ERP system via interfaces, so the company always knows which box is currently in circulation at which customer premises. Based on this information, the RTI pool operator can keep customer inventory levels in the ideal range at all times and flag impending shortages early – or, conversely, request returns of RTIs.

As Daniel van der Vorst emphasizes, it was not easy to develop the final tracking system – which now reliably tracks the boxes throughout the entire cycle. “We also found that the rollout process was more complex than expected, so Turck Vilant was the right partner at that point. Part of the complexity was that we use different types of industrial trucks and had to configure numerous combinations of products.”

Outlook  

So far, not every site in Europe has been fully equipped with Turck Vilant Systems’ RFID track-and-trace solution. This is set to change over the coming months and years in order to close the remaining gaps across Europe. “We will definitely continue to expand the system. For us, it is essential to know where our returnable transport items are at any given time. That means we will also gradually equip our international sites with RFID technology to achieve the greatest possible transparency in material flows,” Daniel van der Vorst concludes.

Customer | www.recalo.com