Tracking of Returnable Packaging and Transport Units with active RFID in the grocery supply chain

The fresh products supply chain still has room to improve and increase efficiency and even become an intelligent supply chain by means of automating simple but valuable data flows which will be the foundations and first stage for developing new value-added services. The Spanish company ECOMOVISTAND has developed an innovative and ecological packaging and transport unit, called MT, for the grocery supply chain, which can be used in the entire product cycle; that is, the MT serves (1) as packaging at the producer, (2) as transport unit, (3) as storage at warehouses, and (4) as display stand at the supermarket, all in the same mechanical system, being thus a Returnable Packaging and Transport Unit. An MT needs the support of information technologies to achieve its true potential. In this paper we show the work developed in collaboration with ECOMOVISTAND in order to turn the MT into an intelligent product platform by embedding Active RFID tags. Data flows are integrated into an information system, called MEGASTAND, which allows to track MTs over the entire supply chain and provide value-added services to the customers.