September 21, 2017
Innovative and simplified tag offers high-performance and cost-efficient solution to tagging everyday objects with a metallic or metallized surface, and outperforms rival technologies.
Smartrac’s Midas FlagTag® can be applied to all surfaces of retail, pharma or industrial items. Designed for item-level tagging, especially on metallic surfaces like foil packaging, the tag outperforms competing solutions in less demanding physical environments.
Its simplified design and innovative use of the metal packaging as part of the antenna structure makes the Midas FlagTag an innovative on-metal solution for product or part authentication, as well as supply chain & asset management. It is much more cost-efficient to deploy than the conventional foam-based inlays and hard tags typically used for on-metal tagging.
Innovative design for best-in-class performance
When used as a standard flat paper tag, Midas FlagTag has a small form factor with a total size of 60 x 21 mm. Its special feature is that a flag can be created at the end of the tag with a final paper tag size of 43 x 21 mm after folding, and with an exposed flag size of 17 x 21 mm.
The folded part of the tag sticks out of the metal like a flag, and the attached antenna part uses the metal surface as part of the antenna structure. Read distances of over 10 meters can be achieved, depending on the size and geometry of the metal object, which outperforms competing on-metal tag designs.
A simple fold raises the flag that allows Midas FlagTag to use a metallic surface as an antenna element.
Equally at home in industry, the supply chain, pharma or retail
Some of the potential offered by item-level tagging can be seen in Japan, where the Lawson convenience store chain is trialing a new robotic checkout system from Panasonic. The system uses Midas FlagTag to tag every item in a convenience store, where tagging metallic packaging and liquids has always presented a challenge for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry at point of sale.
Midas FlagTag can solve this issue in an innovative and cost-effective way, allowing the shopping experience to be automated. This offers major benefits to the shopper, in terms of time and convenience; and to the retailer, who can focus staff on more productive tasks, improve stocktaking, and reduce shoplifting.
Shoppers put their chosen items into a dedicated basket, and drop the basket into a reader at the checkout counter. The robotic bagging system automatically lowers the items in the basket into a plastic bag, and all RFID tags on the items are read instantly by an RFID reader installed in the counter. This enables fast and efficient cashierless checkouts.
The use of RFID tagging has the potential to enhance the entire shop supply chain process, by facilitating fast and efficient stocktaking and inventory management; the detection of unpaid items to prevent theft; customer data analysis; and, in future, traceability all the way from the manufacturer to the point of sale and beyond, with major benefits in terms of efficiency and customer engagement.
View a short video about this innovative use case here:
Meanwhile, in the world of heavy industry, a major shipbuilder in Asia has deployed Midas FlagTag to help cope with the millions of unique metal parts used in the construction of a ship - everything from steel pipes to metal bars, plates, fittings, fasteners, etc.
While the effective and efficient tracking of all these parts is critical for project success, efficiency and safety, the use of RFID has not been possible to date due to cost and performance issues.
Midas FlagTag uses the geometry of the metal parts themselves to boost RFID performance, and is able to achieve 100% read success for metallic items randomly stacked on a pallet or inside a crate, with both gantry-mounted and handheld RFID readers. This solution offers significant efficiency gains for complex industrial operations where vast numbers of metallic items need to be managed, accounted for and tracked effectively.
Advanced technology and enhanced connectivity
Smartrac’s Midas FlagTag is equipped with the Impinj Monza R6 IC that features an Autotune function, which helps Midas FlagTag to work at peak efficiency, even in rapidly changing environments. Furthermore, the Monza R6 chip offers unique TID, enabling pre-serialized EPC, and is 100% performance tested.
Midas FlagTag products utilize RAIN RFID technology, based on the UHF RFID protocol standard developed by GS1 and ISO. The tags are compatible with RFID printers for easy printing and encoding.
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