ODENSE, Denmark, April 24, 2009: The vision of contributing to the transformation of the European horticultural industry and making it more efficient by using the RFID technology now results in an agreement between IBM and Container Centralen about one of the largest and most advanced RFID projects in Europe – but increased efficiency is only part of the story.
 

The horticultural industry consists of the entire supply chain of flowers and plants from growers to the retail outlets in Europe. Container Centralen plays a major part in the horticultural logistics since they supply the CC Containers, which are flower and plant trolleys that have become the acknowledged transportation standard in the industry. Starting February 1, 2010, the RFID project will involve more than 20,000 of Container Centralen’s customers and a large number of other users of the CC Container, and will include the tagging with RFID chips of the 3.5 million CC Containers all over Europe.
The project will lead to an unprecedented transparency in the supply chain, but there are also other benefits of the implementation of RFID in the industry. Just like many other industries in the western world, the flower and plant industry is also pestered by copycats, specifically copies of the CC Container, which are included in the CC Container pools in different ways. Since these copy items in no way live up to Container Centralen’s quality standards, or to the quality which is expected in the industry, the low-quality copies jeopardize the consistency in supply for the users and leads to high costs of maintenance of the transportation equipment. This is why there is a general interest in the industry to maintain a high quality standard of the transportation equipment, and precisely for this reason to keep out the low-quality copies from the supply chain.
All this leads to a quite unusual project, compared to other  RFID projects in supply chain management. Apart from the usual requirements concerning management, clarity and stock control, there is also a significant need for a very high security level. As is also true for other product types, a CC Container cannot be copied and introduced in the supply chain – something that the RFID technology combined with a highly advanced security model will ensure in the future.
Also, at a later stage, the RFID project will open up for an even more ambitious and long-term vision: in the future it will be possible to follow the products from grower to the final retail outlet. The current project will create the base for the establishment of a track & trace solution in which the flower and plant trolleys – the CC Containers – will be the central unit that can contribute with knowledge of the stock movements. The project will use the RFID technology in a large scale in the horticultural industry for the first time, and the initiative is widely supported in the industry.
In the autumn of 2008, IBM carried through a pilot project for Container Centralen, in which the solution was defined. The pilot project was so successful that the two parties decided to get started with the full project implementation very soon, during which all CC Containers in circulation will be equipped with RFID tags by February 2010. Behind the lines a very complex software infrastructure is implemented, which makes it possible to manage work processes in relation to the handling of the flower and plant trolleys, to supervise and report about movements, to manage the entire infrastructure across all borders – but especially an extremely advanced security model, which makes it impossible to clone RFID tags for the copy items, and at the same time makes it possible to identify any attempts to introduce copy items in the system.
- It is a very exciting and innovative solution we are going to make for Container Centralen. It is a complete solution where IBM will develop the project and manage it from start to finish. IBM sees many perspectives in the project – both within the transport sector and many other industries which we think will be able to benefit a lot from RFID, says Boy Steiner, Business Development Manager at IBM.
Apart from making it easier to identify illegal copies of flower and plant trolleys, the RFID technology will also lead to significant time and cost savings. These savings will be felt in the entire supply chain in the whole industry, which involves about 80,000 users of Container Centralen’s transportation units.
- IBM has a global vision called the smarter planet vision which basically is about, in the future, using technology in a far more intelligent, socially responsible, environmentally friendly and efficient way than in the past. It is really a question of thinking creatively, seeing new possibilities of use, and obtaining synergies by combining different technologies in new and different ways, says Boy Steiner, and continues:
- We already work with a range of smarter planet projects in IBM worldwide. And with the wide use of RFID to the benefit of a whole industry, which the project with Container Centralen opens for, you can say that this project, when it has been fully implemented, will be a good example of one way among many to realise IBM’s smarter planet vision.
During 2010, IBM expects that 5,000-10,000 handheld scanners will be taken into use in the European horticultural industry. IBM delivers, among others, software and applications for scanners, and thus IBM will get in contact with a large number of companies in an industry to which they have previously had very little contact.

Photo:  With the introduction of RFID in the horticultural industry, flower and plant trolleys can be scanned and counted in one process in the future.