The Peninsula Peninsula Forestry Department (FDPM) recently completed a pilot project to use RFID to track wood and manage forests.
Malaysia and the European Union are currently negotiating a voluntary cooperation agreement based on the EU regulations for round logs and wood products. The European Union requires that exporters of wood products comply with a set of rules to ensure that legal logging of product logs complies with the law of the environment. The EU also requires transparency in the control and monitoring processes. Once these controls and processes are put in place, the Malaysian government can authorize the issuance of export permits that meet the EU standards, and at the same time, it also combats illegal logging. Among them, one of the requirements of the agreement is to use a national timber tracking system to improve the transparency and traceability of the timber supply chain.
At present, the Peninsula of Malaysia reads the identification code on the tree's logo by naked eyes and manually records the trees. However, it is difficult for manual systems to trace back every piece of processed wood, and in particular it is impossible to maintain a complete written record throughout the supply chain to ensure delivery of all taxes and legal logging of logs. An automated system can solve these problems. To this end, FDPM has invited a number of technology vendors to test forest management systems based on RFID and bar code technology. The tracking software vendor Helveta became the only partner company in the initial phase of the project. The company was appointed to cooperate with the Forest Department of Terengganu (TSFD) in a forest area of ​​129,143 hectares.
The purpose of the pilot project is to demonstrate whether the RFID system is sufficient to meet the legal requirements of wild woodland, said Nigel Dore, chief technology officer of Helveta. “This system supports tree pre-cutting inventory to collect information on felling; when the trees are cut into logs at the yard, and when logs are transported out of the woodland, information is obtained at the TSFD checkpoint outside the forest land,†he explained.
All trees tracked in the chain of custody are affixed with passive UHF tags that comply with the EPCGen2 and ISO18000-6C standards. The project team used two types of tags based on availability and appearance. One tag operates at 860-960 MHz and the other 865-869 MHz.
RFID tags are secured with staples, or hammers are placed on a tree or log. Although the tag lacks a special bead protective cover, neither of these methods will damage the tag. The project uses four RFID Teklogix Workabout handhelds running Helveta's mobile data acquisition software to read the unique ID code for each tag. From forest land, RFIDWorkabout equipment was used to confirm tag ID codes at various check points in the supply chain.
A total of 242 trees were counted, of which 62 were felled during the test. Therefore, 188 were labelled and 81 passed through various checkpoints in the chain of custody. During the project, the staff has checkpoints at various locations where the supervisory changes take place, including the locations where the original trees were counted, felled and processed into round logs, and the time the timber arrived at and left the yard and passed through a roadside forest station. .
Helveta's CIWorld platform is used as a central database to manage data and generate online reports based on collected data to provide visibility of wood and wood products in the supply chain. The data stored on the PsionTeklogix device is uploaded via the USB connection to an online notebook in the main office. Information can also be transmitted over a wireless Wi-Fi interface or a GPRS-connected mobile network.
Project reports include forms such as pre-cutting inventory and company documents. CIWorld checks, analyzes, and merges all acquired data; when the data is inconsistent, the system also generates an alarm.
According to Dore, RFID systems have many advantages over barcodes. These advantages include RFID reading and writing capabilities, tags can be written into the history of the products posted; high-speed identification of round logs; automatic production of RFID reports, such as inventory, yard reports, etc., which include RFIDID code for confirmation and repeated inspections.
Dore said that the system can support forest inventory and management activities, such as planting plans; it can also manage forest-related documents, timber processing, transportation and exports, etc.; supports alarm systems; automatically calculates and collects tax revenues and increases the book value. Transparency, identify illegal activities.
The system design took five weeks, and the inventory of trees took two days, and the chain of custody field tests lasted 10-12 days. Terengganu Province is expected to launch a full-scale forestry tracking project next year. It has not been determined whether it will use only RFID, barcodes, or applications.
Malaysia and the European Union are currently negotiating a voluntary cooperation agreement based on the EU regulations for round logs and wood products. The European Union requires that exporters of wood products comply with a set of rules to ensure that legal logging of product logs complies with the law of the environment. The EU also requires transparency in the control and monitoring processes. Once these controls and processes are put in place, the Malaysian government can authorize the issuance of export permits that meet the EU standards, and at the same time, it also combats illegal logging. Among them, one of the requirements of the agreement is to use a national timber tracking system to improve the transparency and traceability of the timber supply chain.
At present, the Peninsula of Malaysia reads the identification code on the tree's logo by naked eyes and manually records the trees. However, it is difficult for manual systems to trace back every piece of processed wood, and in particular it is impossible to maintain a complete written record throughout the supply chain to ensure delivery of all taxes and legal logging of logs. An automated system can solve these problems. To this end, FDPM has invited a number of technology vendors to test forest management systems based on RFID and bar code technology. The tracking software vendor Helveta became the only partner company in the initial phase of the project. The company was appointed to cooperate with the Forest Department of Terengganu (TSFD) in a forest area of ​​129,143 hectares.
The purpose of the pilot project is to demonstrate whether the RFID system is sufficient to meet the legal requirements of wild woodland, said Nigel Dore, chief technology officer of Helveta. “This system supports tree pre-cutting inventory to collect information on felling; when the trees are cut into logs at the yard, and when logs are transported out of the woodland, information is obtained at the TSFD checkpoint outside the forest land,†he explained.
All trees tracked in the chain of custody are affixed with passive UHF tags that comply with the EPCGen2 and ISO18000-6C standards. The project team used two types of tags based on availability and appearance. One tag operates at 860-960 MHz and the other 865-869 MHz.
RFID tags are secured with staples, or hammers are placed on a tree or log. Although the tag lacks a special bead protective cover, neither of these methods will damage the tag. The project uses four RFID Teklogix Workabout handhelds running Helveta's mobile data acquisition software to read the unique ID code for each tag. From forest land, RFIDWorkabout equipment was used to confirm tag ID codes at various check points in the supply chain.
A total of 242 trees were counted, of which 62 were felled during the test. Therefore, 188 were labelled and 81 passed through various checkpoints in the chain of custody. During the project, the staff has checkpoints at various locations where the supervisory changes take place, including the locations where the original trees were counted, felled and processed into round logs, and the time the timber arrived at and left the yard and passed through a roadside forest station. .
Helveta's CIWorld platform is used as a central database to manage data and generate online reports based on collected data to provide visibility of wood and wood products in the supply chain. The data stored on the PsionTeklogix device is uploaded via the USB connection to an online notebook in the main office. Information can also be transmitted over a wireless Wi-Fi interface or a GPRS-connected mobile network.
Project reports include forms such as pre-cutting inventory and company documents. CIWorld checks, analyzes, and merges all acquired data; when the data is inconsistent, the system also generates an alarm.
According to Dore, RFID systems have many advantages over barcodes. These advantages include RFID reading and writing capabilities, tags can be written into the history of the products posted; high-speed identification of round logs; automatic production of RFID reports, such as inventory, yard reports, etc., which include RFIDID code for confirmation and repeated inspections.
Dore said that the system can support forest inventory and management activities, such as planting plans; it can also manage forest-related documents, timber processing, transportation and exports, etc.; supports alarm systems; automatically calculates and collects tax revenues and increases the book value. Transparency, identify illegal activities.
The system design took five weeks, and the inventory of trees took two days, and the chain of custody field tests lasted 10-12 days. Terengganu Province is expected to launch a full-scale forestry tracking project next year. It has not been determined whether it will use only RFID, barcodes, or applications.