RFID implementation in Spain's Post Offices
Submitted by jeffrey on Thu, 2007-04-12 04:35.
Tags: post office | spain
Spain has one of Europe’s biggest post office networks. The network handles every year about 5 billion pieces of mail. The post office services, known as Correos, employ 65,000 people. Correos is one of the biggest European employers. Managing such a huge load of work has always been a challenge for the organization. Often their were delays in mail deliveries. The department was determined to improve services. RFID implementation was part of the new initiative to improve services and compete better against the private big courier companies.
Correos planned, probably, the biggest deployment of RFID network. It installed a total of 340 RFID readers and 2000 antennas across its nation wide network of 16 automatic mail processing centers and 4 bulk mail processing centers. About 5000 passive RFID tags, complying with UHF EPC Gen 2 standards, were used in the process. The hardware was procured from Motorola, Sybase’s iAnyWhere software was installed and system integration services were taken from Barcelona based Aida Centre.
The passive tags, each embedded in 4x2 inch shipping labels, are placed in envelopes to be sent to various offices of Correos. The letters are then sent in drop boxes to the bulk mail handling centers where they are read by the fixed installed RFID readers. Hence, the software application now knows that letters have reached the bulk mail handling center. After this the mails reach the automated distribution center and small post offices. The mail is read at each of this distribution point. Each tag is read, both, during entry as well as exit from the processing centers. At the final destinations, the mails are inserted in new envelopes and dropped in mail collection box.
The key challenged faced by the team was in installation of readers. In order, to read each tag readers were installed closely at doors. However, this started resulting in interference. Finally, the team re-planned the reader installation points and resolved the problem.
Technorati Tags: post office# spain# #
Tags: post office | spain
Spain’s Post Office Department
Spain has one of Europe’s biggest post office networks. The network handles every year about 5 billion pieces of mail. The post office services, known as Correos, employ 65,000 people. Correos is one of the biggest European employers. Managing such a huge load of work has always been a challenge for the organization. Often their were delays in mail deliveries. The department was determined to improve services. RFID implementation was part of the new initiative to improve services and compete better against the private big courier companies.
The network deployed
Correos planned, probably, the biggest deployment of RFID network. It installed a total of 340 RFID readers and 2000 antennas across its nation wide network of 16 automatic mail processing centers and 4 bulk mail processing centers. About 5000 passive RFID tags, complying with UHF EPC Gen 2 standards, were used in the process. The hardware was procured from Motorola, Sybase’s iAnyWhere software was installed and system integration services were taken from Barcelona based Aida Centre.
How the system works?
The passive tags, each embedded in 4x2 inch shipping labels, are placed in envelopes to be sent to various offices of Correos. The letters are then sent in drop boxes to the bulk mail handling centers where they are read by the fixed installed RFID readers. Hence, the software application now knows that letters have reached the bulk mail handling center. After this the mails reach the automated distribution center and small post offices. The mail is read at each of this distribution point. Each tag is read, both, during entry as well as exit from the processing centers. At the final destinations, the mails are inserted in new envelopes and dropped in mail collection box.
The challenges
The key challenged faced by the team was in installation of readers. In order, to read each tag readers were installed closely at doors. However, this started resulting in interference. Finally, the team re-planned the reader installation points and resolved the problem.
The installation has resulted in great gains for the post office department as it now can track deliveries at every point and avoid most of the delays. Correos implementation is one of the biggest success stories of RFID deployment in Spain.
Technorati Tags: post office# spain# #