A study for optimizing the reading rate of RFID tagged cartons in palletizing process

In the advanced Supply Chain/Logistic system, RFID system adapts the radio waves to scan and record the data received from RFID tags. The RFID readers can be placed up to a few meters away from RFID tagged objects. According to the investigation conducted by EPCglobal, the readers are still unable to achieve 100% reading rates, and it means the Wal-Mart and its suppliers could not reach complete reading rate in the process of commodity transaction. This study adopts the Taguchi Method and selects major controllable factors, for example distance, placement of RFID tag, and direction of RFID antenna, all possible factors are adopted in this study. The results show the reading rate of RFID system is mainly affected by relative positions of RFID tags and RFID antenna. In the final, a standard model will be initiated for RFID system, and this systematic arrangement would insure to optimize the reading rate of palletizing process.