SUCCESS AT THE EDGE

Flower Pedigree: RFID Compels Buyers to Pay Higher Prices for Fresher Flowers

By Bob DiLoreto

FloraHolland is a colossal cooperation of flower and plant growers worldwide that had a turnover of over 2 billion Euros in 2005. Each day, approximately 4,000 buyers (dealers and exporters) from around the world purchase fresh flowers in FloraHolland's international trade center using 26 auction clocks online or FloraHolland's direct sales force.

FloraHolland houses flowers from approximately 7,000 growers worldwide in one of Europe's largest commercial warehouses, roughly the size of 100 football fields covering 1 million square feet. On a daily basis, trucks begin arriving at the FloraHolland Naaldwijk facility at 4:00 a.m., where employees use tractors, trolleys, and bicycles to handle incoming shipments.

The logistics of the ornamental flower and plant trade are complex. The product is perishable and vulnerable, making speed, reliability, and real-time information essential to buyers and sellers. FloraHolland wanted to deploy RFID technology not only to capture location data of flowers in the moving trolleys, but also to make this information instantly accessible and visible for the auction's IT systems, employees, and end customers.

FloraHolland wanted to deploy RFID technology not only to capture location data of flowers in the moving trolleys, but also to make this information instantly accessible and visible for the auction's IT systems, employees, and end customers.

For the past four years, FloraHolland has utilized an RFID system that includes several loop antennas embedded in the floor to monitor when tractors pulling trolleys of flowers arrive at the auction floor. These antennas interrogate (signal) the Texas Instruments ISO 18000 134.2 KHz passive tag embedded in each passing trolley.

The cooperative brings traders daily onto its auction floor, where more than 150,000 trolleys of flowers are moved from one location to another for selling and shipping. The buyers subsequently sell the product to retailers throughout the world. Data about the trolley number and the products are displayed on an LED screen on the auction floor, alerting buyers as to which products are heading to auction.

The key problem with this initial RFID implementation was that for the interrogators to successfully read the trolleys' RFID tags, drivers had to pass directly over the antennas, in single file, which slowed traffic. The congestion was complicated by the fact that one motorized tractor can pull more than eight trolleys, each with its own unique identification.

FloraHolland required a new RFID system that would:

• Capture and accelerate reads on each RFID tag passing through the existing 30 choke points,
• Capture data on multiple trains of tractors and trolleys moving in multiple directions,
• Add more choke-point readers in other areas of heavy traffic, and
• Generate flower pedigree documents authenticating the freshness of the flowers.

FloraHolland installed a real-time RFID system solution provided by systems integrator Atos Origin and RFID software provider, Globe-Ranger. The solution included reader antennas installed in the floor at 67 choke points around the 1 million square foot facilities. The system tracks and collects data by specific location about where the flowers have been and for how long.

Atos Origin completed the new system integration using GlobeRanger's iMotion Edgeware platform and FloraHolland's Microsoft-based Axapta ERP software. This solution captured the location data of flowers in moving trolleys, providing information to potential customers at auction time, such as the type of flowers on a particular trolley, the amount of time in cold storage, and how long they were at the dock door.

Starting at 4:00 a.m., FloraHolland employees start checking in the flowers delivered each morning using a touch-screen computer at the dock door where they grade the flowers based on freshness and quality. They also input the ID number of the RFID tag on the trolley upon which the flowers are loaded. Train drivers wear ID badges with TI's 134.2 KHz passive RFID tags. As a driver passes from one location to another, readers deployed around the facility captures the driver and trolley numbers. This data is then immediately sent and integrated into the FloraHolland database.

This new solution gathers more real-time tracking and tracing information between the start and end points of the delivery process with the use of iMotion software collecting and interpreting data specific to the time every trolley passes over each choke point. The solution also determines the direction of trolleys and their drivers by tracking where the previous RFID read took place. This feature allows FloraHolland and its customers to know how long the flowers remained in any specific part of the facility such as in cold storage, at a dock door, or waiting to enter the auction floor. This allows customers to gain precise information about the freshness of the flowers, thus the term "Flower Pedigree."

At the end of the day, the FloraHolland value proposition is all about "Flower Pedigree." Flowers command a higher price at the auction if the buyer has a well documented trail confirming the freshness of the flowers. This document provides the necessary granularity and accountability of where, when, and how long of each flower received and shipped from FloraHolland.

Bob DiLoreto is the Vice President of Business Development for GlobeRanger. He has over 20 years of sales and sales management experience within emerging growth enterprise software companies that have been pioneers in key markets such as Enterprise Resource Planning, (ERP); Advanced Planning Systems (APS), and Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLM). Mr. DiLoreto can be reached at bdiloreto@globeranger.com.