Active-RFID system operating in heavy environmental conditions to aid the production cycle of bentonite-coal dust mixtures for foundries

This paper deals with an industrial application in which active RFID have been used to tag the operating environments in order to provide aid to a preexisting production process. A system based on active RFID and aiming to assist the production cycle of a factory producing bentonite-coal dust mixtures and lustrous carbon formers for foundries is presented and discussed. The system works in a very heavy environment and uses RFID tags as beacons to locate the various area of the factory. An algorithm to discriminate among different tags is developed and some results are presented. The plant is in production since one year and is showing very satisfactory performances.