UPM Raflatac Supplies Tags To One Of Europe's Largest UHF RFID Deployments

UPM Raflatac is supplying UHF EPC Gen2 tags to car logistics company Assistor for use in a new real-time vehicle logistics management solution. The RFID technology contributes to the efficient handling of vehicles in demanding environments, namely large harbours and warehouses. The complete solution has been developed by Digia.

The system utilizes cost-effective, passive RFID technology to identify vehicles quickly and reliably. When unloaded from ships, vehicles are equipped with UPM Raflatac's UHF Gen2 DogBone RFID tags. An exact warehouse location is assigned to each vehicle so that they are easily located with a hand-held RFID reader. A total of 250 readers are used by the system. Each RFID tag carries information about all actions related to the vehicle during storage and production.

Assistor will deliver around 370,000 vehicles to Finland, the Baltic countries and Russia this year. "Maximal use of the real-time data from our processes gives us a competitive advantage. Furthermore, managing large vehicle warehouses and correctly locating vehicles has until now presented a major challenge," explains Tom Suvanto, Deputy Managing Director at Assistor.

UHF RFID tagging provides a reliable way to enhance the effectiveness of vehicle logistics. "UPM Raflatac's UHF Gen2 DogBone RFID tags are designed to function even in the challenging weather conditions that vehicles might face during transportation," says Mikko Nikkanen, RFID Business Development Director at UPM Raflatac. "Vehicles may be covered with snow or encounter heavy rain, for instance, both being conditions in which barcode technology no longer works."

"Having concluded that the RFID technology was sound, making the decision to abandon the old barcode technology was easy," Suvanto says.

About UPM Raflatac
UPM Raflatac is a world-leading supplier of self-adhesive label materials for a wide variety of needs in product and information labelling. In addition, the company is at the global forefront in the development and high-volume production of HF and UHF radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and inlays. UPM Raflatac, which forms the Label Division of UPM, has around 2,700 employees and made sales of approximately EUR 1 billion in 2007. The company has a global service network consisting of 12 factories on five continents and a broad network of distribution and slitting terminals and sales offices worldwide. Further information is available at www.upmraflatac.com.