Improving continuous traceability of food stuff by using barcode-RFID bidirectional transformation equipment: Two field experiments

摘要

Radio frequency identification (RFID) and quick response (QR) codes are an effective way to identify traceable resource units (TRUs) and are widely applied in traceability systems. TRU transformation is common for things such as beef segmentation and wheat-flour packaging. The present study describes the development and testing of equipment for barcode-RFID bidirectional transformation to improve traceability by conserving identification association and information correspondence while transforming barcodes to RFID and vice versa. The framework of traceable bidirectional identification labels is based on comparing the features of RFID and barcodes and on analyzing TRU transformation. The proposed equipment includes a tactile industrial controller, a RFID-reader module, an embedded printing module, and a barcode scanning module. Furthermore, we develop the main functions of RFID-barcode conversion, bar-code-RFID conversion, and condition monitoring. The system is tested in field experiments based on two typical scenarios: beef segmentation and wheat-flour packaging. The average conversion success rate in RFID-barcode processing is 97%, and in barcode-RFID processing is 93.48%. The proposed equipment is more rapid than the reference method: 3.2 versus 8.7 s for RFID-barcode transformation and 10.5 versus 13.3 s for barcode-RFID transformation. In addition, the proposed equipment is less expensive than the conventional equipment. Test results indicate that continuous traceability is improved because identification association and information correspondence are conserved after TRU transformation.