In order to track slab shipments from its new Brazilian mill to its new Alabama mill and mill in Germany, German steel giant ThyssenKrupp Steel has adopted a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system.
RFID will assist the company in tracking the future shipments of three million metric tons per year of slabs from its new mill being built near Rio de Janeiro, Companhia Siderurgica do Atlantico, to its planned $3.7-billion carbon and stainless steel mill in Mt. Vernon, AL. ThyssenKrupp also plans to supply about two million metric tons a year of carbon steel slabs to its hot mills in Germany.
With this technology, a microchip storing a 10-digit code and an antenna device are embedded in a plastic label - an RFID tag - that will be encoded and attached to the side of each slab at the shipping bay in Brazil. Later, the slab will be read by an RFID reader, which emits an electromagnetic wave that activates the antenna coil in the tag and generates a current. The current activates the microchip, which transmits information back to the reader. The data is then transferred from the reader to the network managing slab traffic, where the data, which includes steel grade, slab dimensions, customer, and product destination, will be stored.
The company announced earlier this year that it was successful in using the RFID technology for 1,000 steel slabs purchased in Brazil and sent to Germany. Once the Brazilian plant is operational in 2009, about 250,000 slabs each year will be transported from Brazil, either to Germany or Alabama.
Slab logistics is a new application for RFID. Reading data from metallic products has been possible using RFID technology for only a bit more than two years, as previously there were problems with electromagnetic waves being reflected from the metallic surfaces. ThyssenKrupp was able to solve this problem by working with the technology consulting company Accenture to develop "flag tags," which are offset on the product surface, for use on steel slabs.
"We don't know of another case where a company is successfully tagging steel slabs in production," said Loic Feinbier, Accenture's RFID expert, of the project.