RFID keeps CN terminal on track

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We've all probably had the exasperating experience: a small object, perhaps a pen or eye glasses we were using moments ago vanishes into thin air the instant it's laid down on the desk.

The folk at Canadian National Railway Co (CN) can empathize with that. In their case, however, the missing object is often a hulking chassis, a wheeled frame hauling a 20 or 40-foot steel intermodal container with over 24,000 kgs of cargo.

"It's hard to believe you could lose something as big as a chassis," said William Bangert, senior vice-president, information and communication technology (ICT) solutions and enterprise business development at Bell Canada in Toronto.

But that was precisely what was happening at CN's intermodal terminal in Brampton, Ont. until the railway company enlisted the help of Bell Canada and Symbol Technologies Inc., a Holtsville, NY-based provider of enterprise mobility products, to deploy ruggedized radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on some 2,000 chassis to track their whereabouts.

RFID technology is extensively used by manufacturers and retailers to track products as they travel through the supply chain.

The Brampton yard, which is CN's largest intermodal terminal, is the first Canadian rail facility to experiment with and reap RFID's benefits.

When a train pulls into the Brampton terminal, the intermodal containers it is carrying are lifted off the vehicle and loaded onto several chassis. The chassis are then transported to a CN yard until they are picked up by the clients for delivery to the appropriate location.

Clients are charged a per diem fee for the time they use the chassis.

The Brampton terminal generated some $1 billion in revenues last year by handling intermodal containers from the U.S., and from provinces across Canada.

Before the deployment of RFID tags, CN personnel jotted the serial numbers of the containers and their destination on a clip board. Personnel checked this record to locate a chassis.

But manual reporting often resulted in inaccuracies according to Remy Benmiloud, manager of intermodal excellence at CN. "Numbers could easily be obscured by debris or other containers or misread by personnel."

It was not uncommon for employees to roam the yard searching for a chassis with the wrong number. "We needed a better tool to track chassis, reduce cycle times and de-congest the yard," said Benmiloud.

Last year the Brampton terminal launched a pilot program to deploy RFID technology in the facility.