RFID and the Cold Chain

Food safety is critical in temperature sensitive goods including produce, fish, meat and dairy products as well as medical products like drugs, blood, vaccines, organs, plasma and tissues. There are two big challenges in maintaining safety in temperature sensitive goods. First, internal temperatures can change rapidly if external conditions such as temperature and humidity are present during transport. The second is maintaining profitability within the cold chain in a highly competitive market. Today, there are innovative real-time cold-chain monitoring system solutions that help deal with these challenges, and RFID is one of them. RFID is a system that uses small radio frequency identification devices for identification and tracking purposes. An RFID tagging system includes the tag itself, a read/write device, and a host system application for data collection, processing, and transmission. RFID technologies are used in the cold chain as an alternative to bar code technology in order to improve performance.

The role of RFID in cold chain is:

to track the geographical position of temperature sensitive goods by using a unique electronic product code (EPC) or other barcode alternatives; to respond to the real-time criteria by identification of store data and to transmit this information before products are damaged; to collect a wide range of information like temperature, humidity, shock/vibration, light, radiation, and concentration of gases; to reduce out-of-stock by sending a notification when the critical level is reached; to increase the productivity and facilitation of JIT principles by decreasing lost stock; to minimize the response time and the labor cost

RFID is a technology that improves visibility and transparency in the cold chain. In addition, RFID can help companies increase their competitive advantage and improve their customers trust. The efficiency of RFID depends on its ability to track and trace each individual product in a way that can provide critical information in order to maintain the proper temperature and safety. Issues facing RFID are ways to track frozen products shelf life remotely and developing multi-sensing RFID nanosensors.