Automated Slab Tracking at ThyssenKrupp

“We had cooperated with other identification companies and system developers in the past. We knew that an RFID tag
that has been bent away from a steel slab can still be read. However, the problem was that the solutions suggested by
other companies did not have sufficient adhesion or applying the labels would have required costly special processes
and systems in our Brazilian plant,” Loïc Feinbier recalls.

The breakthrough was achieved by the cooperation with the experts from S+P Samson GmbH who brought their many
years of experience with identification for steel logistics to the project.

S+P Samson developed an adhesive label made from a film which had the transponder part bent away from the slab like
a flag, via a simple perforation, so that it can be read. Another benefit: S+P labels and tags could be printed using a standard Lexmark laser printer which has an additional RFID unit fitted that writes the chips. As printing and RFID programming is done at the same time, the number of work steps and potential errors are minimised, particularly, as the successful encoding if the RFID tag is verified during the printing process. “The readability of the RFID signals in a metallic environment had initially been regarded as the main challenge. Interestingly, reading out the RFID tags in the steel sector via flexible tags that were sticking out at a right angle was much quicker and easier to solve than expected. It was a much bigger challenge to develop a special adhesive for applying the labels to the rough surfaces of the slabs which have to adhere reliably in spite of wet conditions or surface issues such as scale,” explains Karl Tochtermann the contribution of S+P Samson to the success of the project.