Co-author: Carl Michener / ID BBN

That's the situation at BAAS Plantenservice's horticultural distribution center in Holland during peak season, from March to May. Now imagine keeping track of those comings and goings with clipboards, telephone calls and email.

Until recently, horticulture distribution powerhouse BAAS Plantenservice relied heavily on paper lists, which were then transcribed into a database. Such operation is labor oriented and always prone to errors. Although it may sound amazing that someone would jump directly from such "pen-and-paper" operation, it looks as though this is a growing trend. For example in the case of BAAS it was more sensible to skip the "typical" step of barcode. In their case the decisive moment was Container Centralen's "Chip it project" in 2011.

Container Centralen, one of Europe's largest distributors of house hold plants decided to tag its 3,5 million trolleys with RFID back in 2010. The main objectives for Container Centralen's RFID project (Project Chip It) at the time where the speedier turnaround time for the trolleys as well as counterfeit trolleys, which caused extra cost in the shape of additional repair. Since the project was started, Container Centralen has reported positive outcomes on both matters.

BAAS Plantenservice took one look at the new traceable trolleys coming into its facilities and saw an opportunity for its own operations. Convinced of the efficiencies of RFID and encouraged by an influx of tag-carrying trolleys they decided to set up a pilot program. "The process prior to RFID inevitably involved some human error," says Edwin van Lenthe, Logistics Manager at BAAS. "But there was also a lag in getting information from paper into our computer system. A one-hour delay, when you've got hundreds of trucks rolling in, is a problem."

BAAS Plantenservice implemented the pilot during the summer of 2011 in collaboration with four of their main growers. These suppliers were provided with mobile computers and an application that allowed the scan of individual products and the associating of the products to a trolley. The data was transmitted to a central database, which is also available at BAAS Distribution Center. Now trolleys are scanned on the receiving dock and the data is verified against that which growers had scanned and the information is further passed on to BAAS' ERP system.

The pilot project was extremely positive and hence BAAS Plantenservice continued with the work, involving currently partners to account for approximately 50% of their inbound volume, to track inbound trolleys and take advantage of the tags they carried. "When trolley administration is completed automatically it saves growers time as well," says van Lenthe. "The system creates a more transparent, faster supply chain, helping to increase profit margin. Certainly, growers that participate will share in more revenue."

All of Europe currently sees an increase in efficiency related to RFID enabled Returnable Item Tracking (RTI). Different projects suggest cost savings of millions of Euros on shared RTI pools. Although many operate their crate and trolley pools solely on barcode, I estimate we will in the coming years see more and more innovative uses of RFID in the shared pools. A-soon-to-finalize pilot project was recently introduced at RFID Lab Finland's spring seminar: this project involved a pool of trolleys in the dairy industry and a unique tag related.

Read about the Baas Plantenservice project

Read about the Container Centralen Chip It project or here