RFID in the Food Processing industries is being applied to identify raw material history, record processing & handling equipment status and use, store 'parent-child' product relationships and keep track of what is shipped where. The benefits amount to a win-win for industry players as internal operations can be better managed while regulatory compliance and food safety are improved. Standards-based UHF passive RFID technology is becoming the automatic data collection solution that best fits the difficult environments and handling requirements of Food Processing industries.

There are many opportunities for ROI in Food Processing:

• Food Safety
• Food Traceability
• Customer Service - selection, freshness, quality control
• Smart Recall
• Shrinkage Reduction
• Reusable Asset Management - trays, containers, totes
• Regulatory Compliance - cleaning, handling
• Factory Optimization - productivity, capacity planning, order processing

An RFID Infrastructure for Food Processing - The food processing industries are built around complex supply chains that use varying levels of technology to support processes that move food from the farm to the table. The use of RFID at various points in this value chain creates many requirements for an expandable, sustainable infrastructure. Whether tagging and tracking food items at the agriculture source or at facilities such as meat packing and dairy plants, the RFID technology choices employed must be capable of closed-loop, open-loop and cross-enterprise data collection and exchange involving many processes and potentially many companies and government agencies.

RFID augmented processes will incorporate both fixed/portal type readers and handheld/mobile readers to facilitate tag data capture at many locations for many subscribers. And, most implementers envision incremental use of RFID over time as they expand the number of tracking locations, deployed readers and consuming applications across their enterprises. The Reva Systems Tag Acquisition Processor (TAP) delivers the scalable infrastructure platform that food processing enterprises can depend on to generate value now and in the future.

The Reva TAP supports most major reader brands and models with simple point-and-click configuration. The Reva solution provides a graphical user interface that allows implementers to define physical facility layouts, place fixed readers, indicate benchmark reference tags for coordinating and dynamically determining mobile reader locations, create business location representations and once deployed - remotely manage and monitor facility level RFID networks. Configuration tasks can also be automated to facilitate rapid rollouts for deployments that incorporate 100's of facilities.