Impact of RFID-TTI technologies on the efficiency of perishable products logistics

The paper concerns the logistics activities related to perishable products. Perishable products are delivered from the production site to a warehouse by refrigerated truck. Perishable products are accepted or not at the warehouse entrance, according to their detected quality levels; if accepted, they are stored in the warehouse in suitable environmental conditions. Finally, they are delivered by refrigerated truck to the destination. Human errors affect these activities. Perishable products have to be delivered in a suitable quality level to the destination. Because of human errors, sometime products arrive in an unsuitable quality level and therefore, there is a loss for the company. RFID technologies, integrated with time temperature indicators (TTI), allow a prompt detection of abnormal quality loss and the prompt actuation of mitigation actions. In order to evaluate the benefits of different RFID-TTI implementation set-ups, the study defines a methodology that measures the risk of monetary losses. The method is applied to a case study and the results are presented.