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RFID sensor-based traceability system for fresh seafood distribution developed for Sendai Suisan
Sendai Suisan Co., Ltd. and its group of companies are primarily engaged in the seafood wholesaling business mainly at the Sendai City Central Wholesale Market. Sendai Suisan is an innovative distribution company at the vanguard of the fresh seafood wholesale sector. It has developed a total quality management system to deliver a better product from the producer to the consumer's dining table in a more safe, secure, reliable and efficient manner.
Of all the products handled by the Sendai Suisan Group, fresh seafood in particular demands a high level of freshness. The utmost care must be taken to manage the freshness of the product throughout the distribution process because any increase in temperature, change in humidity or external shock during transit could have a major impact on quality.
However, nobody in the fresh seafood wholesaling industry, which deals with marine produce, had developed a traceability system for closely monitoring the condition of merchandise during the distribution process using in-process "logistical quality" data.
To create such a system, Sendai Suisan focused on the deployment of RFID sensors (electronic tags), an electronic device befitting the ubiquitous networking era. NEC already had experience in the development of traceability systems using RFID sensors for the distribution sector. We had accumulated a range of expertise in conducting field tests and in operating such systems. Sendai Suisan was keen to apply information technology to ensure merchandise quality because freshness is vital to seafood. In response, NEC initiated a project to create the first such solution in the seafood industry.
RFID readers/writers directly connected to mobile handsets
RFID technology uses tags embedded with a small wireless IC chip, rather than barcodes, to identify and manage individual items. In addition to the wireless IC chip, the RFID sensor system comprises temperature, humidity, and three-axis shock sensors; a memory to store these measurements; and a battery to power the system. The system satisfies the needs of customers who want to know not only "what something is," but also "what conditions it has experienced previously."
To actually build a traceability system, an entire information system must be developed. The system involves not only the RFID devices, but also readers/writers to gather and store the data; a database to manage the historical data collected on temperature, humidity and external shock; and business process application software.
To gain this kind of expertise, NEC had previously explored RFID sensor applications in the agricultural sector. In past projects, having undertaken joint field trials with progressive agricultural firms, NEC developed a commercial-grade quality assurance and traceability system capable of precisely monitoring in-process freshness controls during the distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables for export such as apples and nashi pears. This system has helped to enhance the brand value of such products.
In November 2008, NEC and Sendai Suisan began testing the operation of the system in actual distribution processes. The specially designed packing boxes for carrying the merchandise are fitted with RFID tags with sensors capable of simultaneously measuring and storing readings of three different parameters: temperature, humidity and external shocks. This makes it possible to monitor and record product quality in transit. Operators use RFID readers/writers directly connected to a mobile handset to read the information on the RFID tags.
The system allows workers to instantly check quality records stored on RFID tags at distribution sites. By routing the information over the Internet, the system also enables monitoring by managers at distant locations.
The Sendai Suisan Group operates a large distribution and supply chain for fresh marine produce linking more than 1,300 producers and retailers, mainly in the Tohoku region of northern Japan. The first aim in introducing the traceability system was to bolster freshness controls across the entire supply chain. Analyses of the RFID temperature, humidity and shock measurements provide a detailed glimpse into every corner of the distribution process. Sharing this information on product quality across the network enables improvements to be made quickly where necessary. In addition, predicting delivery times is easier using the RFID data gathered at various checkpoints along distribution routes. This is expected to lead to improvements in working conditions - for example, no more extended waiting for a delivery truck to arrive during the harsh cold of winter.
RFID tags can also fulfill another role as electronic slips (delivery slips). Besides helping to conserve resources through paperless operations, the system also reduces complex clerical processes by eliminating cumbersome traditional data re-entry processes, for example. To promote business process reforms, the aim is to adopt a standardized system for distribution based on a common Business Message Standard (BMS). Put differently, this system is designed to provide a total solution by helping to address various process-related issues alongside quality management.
Through this kind of innovation built around advanced IT, NEC will work hard to enhance food safety and reliability as a matter of course, while crafting solutions for realizing NEC's vision of "an information society friendly to humans and the earth."
Distribution and traceability systems can also improve working conditions.
Atsushi Ogasawara
Assistant Manager
Sales Promotion Division, NEC Corporation
After joining NEC, I spent my first five years or so as a systems engineer working on the development of communications-related backbone systems. What I wanted to do was to help re-energize the primary-sector industries that were Japan's mainstay in past years, especially agricultural sectors that have fallen on hard times. So I made use of NEC's internal recruitment system to get a transfer into an NEC sales division, which was a completely different line of work for me. Then I discovered RFID tags with temperature sensors. When NEC's research division showed me this device, I knew intuitively that it would be useful and I immediately showed one of them to a customer at an agricultural enterprise. The response was extremely favorable. That in turn paved the way for our development of a traceability system for managing the temperature of agricultural produce for export and to this latest traceability system for managing the quality of fresh seafood.
I am delighted that my ambition to use innovation to improve the health of primary-sector industries has been realized in this way. We have now begun to apply sensor RFID devices to a broader range of fields. I have high hopes that this innovation will prove successful in a variety of settings.
Mr.Hiroshi Sato
Executive Officer
Deputy General Manager, Management Division
General Manager, Information Systems Department
Sendai Suisan Co., Ltd.
Our first opportunity to work with NEC was on the development of a voice-activated data-input system for use amid the noise and bustle of the fish market. With this step, our IT initiatives, under the slogan of "IT in working boots," became widely known in the industry. This latest RFID-based quality and traceability system will be installed on a large scale covering our entire distribution process from producer to consumer. We undertook the field tests on the assumption that, once employed across the board, this system would become critical infrastructure for delivering the food safety and reliability that our customers demand. I have every confidence that the newly deployed system will succeed.
U.S. healthcare regulators have established stringent standards for temperature monitoring of refrigerated and frozen hospital materials, such as pharmaceuticals and blood. St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center (St. Joseph's) previously maintained these standards through a manual process - nurses, pharmacists and other staff used thermometers to routinely monitor the temperature of vaccines, pharmaceuticals, blood bags, organs, patient test results and other materials. To make this process more efficient and quality assurance more precise, St. Joseph's has deployed a new Wi-Fi tag-based temperature monitoring system.
NEC and NEC Unified Solutions, Inc., NEC's North American enterprise network arm, had already supplied St. Joseph's with a wireless local area network (LAN) system. For this project, the two system integrators crafted the new temperature monitoring system by integrating an RFID solution into the hospital's existing wireless IP network.
With the new system, active Wi-Fi tags with temperature sensors are placed inside refrigerators and freezers containing temperature-sensitive items such as pharmaceuticals and blood. Temperature readings are collected automatically over the hospital's wireless LAN network. The system thus greatly enhances the efficiency of quality assurance processes, which were previously conducted manually by nurses, pharmacists and other hospital staff.
Furthermore, the collected temperature readings can be checked and viewed at any time using Web browsers on workstations located at nursing centers and medical offices. This enables 24-hour, real-time monitoring of the storage condition and location of refrigerated and frozen materials. And if the temperature exceeds or falls below a set threshold, an alarm is triggered. These features help to enhance safety at the medical frontlines.
Building on this achievement, NEC will continue taking advantage of high-quality wireless networks to provide a variety of solutions that help to ensure safety and reliability at the forefront of medicine.
Mr. Chuck Fennell, Chief Information Officer (CIO)
St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center
"With the AeroScout temperature monitoring solution in place, we can now use the same Wi-Fi network and software infrastructure to run additional visibility applications, such as location tracking and asset management," says Mr. Chuck Fennell, St. Joseph's Chief Information Officer (CIO). "We have nearly 6,000 appliances in our hospital that we could potentially monitor with NEC's solution. Now that we have made the initial investment in wireless infrastructure and visibility applications, it is easy to make a very convincing business case for layering location tracking on top of it."
