Tetas Textiles, a Turkish textile industry equipment and materials supplier, expands the company's range of RFID applications by combining an employee tracking system with a vehicle tracking information system. The data collected by the vehicle information system - such as vehicle fuel consumption and location - combined with the personal information collected by RFID and the cargo data collected by the barcode allows managers to view the status of the goods shipped by the employee in real time. The pallet is affixed with an EHF Gen 2 compliant UHF passive tag. The forklift is equipped with an RFID reader and antenna to identify the pallet. When the driver unloads a pallet from the high bracket, the forklift reader identifies the bracket and the shelf number. In addition, when the vehicle moves within the warehouse, another antenna at the bottom of the forklift identifies the EPC Gen 2 RFID tag embedded in the floor to identify the location of the vehicle. When the goods pass through the warehouse entrance and exit gates, the RFID readers installed at these locations read the passive tags of the pallets.
Tetas in Istanbul develops its vehicle information system using GPS, GPRS and RFID technologies. Before an employee receives a shipping task. The vehicle ID code and the customer's order information are entered into the company's computer via barcode. When entering the vehicle, the worker uses the integrated RFID reader of the vehicle information system to scan the 13.56 MHz NXP Mifare RFID chip in the employee ID card, and the employee ID card is also used to enter and exit the Tetas location. Employees can use vehicle systems when transporting or visiting customers in goods (such as sewing machines, office equipment and parts). In the vehicle's information system, the GPS system helps the driver navigate, and the coordinates of the vehicle's location are sent via GPRS so that managers can track the location of the employee. By combining all the data, the manager knows which worker is driving which car, which order to ship, and the location of the vehicle at any time.
“When we can see if the goods are in a certain position on the transport route, the goods are starting to get smarter†Tetas general manager Moris Yaffe said that the company started implementing the car information system six months ago and completed it in October. So far, the company has completed the installation of equipment for 110 vehicles (including 3 trucks).
Most of the Tetas fleet is rented, so the company needs to closely monitor the costs and hopes to use this information to manage employees and know when, where and why they use a car.
Through the data collected by the automotive information system, Yaffe explained that Tetas can calculate the cost of performing various tasks for different processes. The vast majority of vehicles are used by the sales department, and management may need to know whether sales people are visiting their designated customers. The car information system provides maps and reports for managers, and it is easier to see which employee is using which car and whether to use the car during the week or after work hours.
The company's logistics manager also uses the vehicle information system to monitor the number of kilometers traveled per vehicle, evaluate the performance of the freight, and use these data to calculate the cost per trip.
This project is not the first RFID project of Tetas. In 2006, the company used RFID to track pallets in a 8,500-square-meter warehouse in Tekbes. Prior to the installation of the RFID system, Tetas did not use any electronic identification to track 25,000 different items that the company supplied to 6,000 customers (mostly garment manufacturers). With this system, the company implemented an RFID system in its six warehouses and integrated it with Oracle E-Business Suite. 
Tetas Textiles Expands RFID Application Scale with RFID Employee Vehicle Management System
Combined with this information, the system provides Tetas with a real-time view of the exact location of all the goods in the warehouse, enabling fast tracking of inventory. “Now we only need to count the warehouse for 2 hours,†Yaffe said. “The efficiency has increased by 30% - 35%.â€
The company purchased several RFID readers and installed them on 20 forklifts and gates. The company uses 10 Siemens fixed readers, 9 handheld ATID readers, and a handheld Nordic ID reader to identify the tagged items. The handset runs Reva Systems' RFID software. The company employs 13,000 labels per year, the vast majority of which is provided by UPM Raflatac. Tetas develops middleware for this system and integrates its own projects.
Before the implementation of RFID, Tetas had already posted two labels on the pallet - but Yaffe said that this actually made the system more complicated. “We found that the more tags we use, the more error-prone the system is,†he explained. Therefore, the company currently only uses one type of label for the pallet and adjusts the system to achieve a 99% read rate."
The Tetas Group consists of two companies that produce garments for export, a textile, packaging label and stationery manufacturing company. Tetas uses an RFID system to track webs. The web is 100 cm in diameter, 64 cm high and weighs 673 kg.
Companies typically use bar code labels to identify webs and distribute webs to specific pallets labeled with EPC Gen 2 RFID tags. In some cases, however, the company applied EPC Gen 2 RFID tags to the web to track specific details of the paper, such as quality and weight. Given the sheer weight and size of paper rolls and the way they store high brackets, RFID has proven to be the ideal way to identify. Workers are close to the shelves filled with paper rolls and use the handheld to read the RFID tags of the rolls to understand the details of the product without having to search for bar codes.
In another RFID project, Tetas designed an RFID system to enhance the visitors' experience and collect customer information. The system, called IZ-TAN-BUL, is simply translated as "Tracking, Identification and Positioning" with active and passive RFID tags. Salespeople working at the Tetas booth wear active Wi-Fi tags to enable their actions to be tracked over Wi-Fi networks. Visitors are assigned an EPC Gen 2 UHF label that can be used to identify themselves and purchase drinks. RFID readers installed in different parts of the booth read customer tags. By compiling the data, the company can understand which customer has the longest stay in the booth and track the number of customers.
Considering the extensive experience of Tetas in RFID technology and system applications, the Turkish government and private companies encourage Tetas to provide RFID technology to other companies and industries. To this end, Tetas is now developing a car yard management system using RFID, bar code, GPS and GPRS technology, which is expected to be available soon.