[06/09/08]
ArcelorMittal has implemented a fully automated weighing system to weigh and identify railway wagons and units using the RFID technology. The wagon weighing and identification system is thus fully automatic and unattended. The system is the result of the joint effort of Tamtron, manufacturer of railway weighing systems, and Barco, RFID and barcode integrator.
Initial Customer Situation
ArcelorMittal Ostrava a.s. is the largest metallurgical company in the Czech Republic. The manufacturing portfolio of the company includes crude iron and steel production and processing as well as secondary metallurgical operations. A major part of the products are transported by railway. For that purpose, ArcelorMittal uses standard wagon weighing systems requiring additional attendance. The objective of the project was to implement a fully automated digital system independent of the human factor to automate the process of wagon weighing and data transfer to the information system without the need for any additional attendance, manual recording, information entry and preparation of any further documents.
Solution Development and Proposal
Tamtron teamed up with Barco to develop a comprehensive automatic weighing system featuring automatic identification of the individual wagons. Tamtron developed the TRAPPER dynamic railway weighing system, used to determine the weight for commercial purposes which, combined with a sophisticated control system, ensures high weighing accuracy and guarantees long-term system reliability. Weighing on the TRAPPER system is an automatic and unattended process. As the train unit passes the weighbridge, the device automatically recognises the individual wagon types and weighs them. Information about the wagon weight, type, sequence number in the unit and its speed at the moment of weighing is stored in the control system for further processing. The only yet critical detail, which had to be added to the information obtained in this manner, was the unique identification number of the wagon being weighed. This was why Tamtron looked for a suitable technology to automatically identify the individual wagons and transfer the information to the weighing system. The supplier of choice of the technology meeting the parameters required for the automatic weighing system was Barco, a company specialising in RFID solutions operating in the UHF band. The product resulting from the co-operation is the fully automatic TRAPPER DRS ID system installed in December 2007 on the company railway of ArcelorMittal Ostrava a.s.
Solution Description
The system consists of the TRAPPER DRS wagon weighing system and the ALIEN ALR-8800 industrial radio frequency identification system. It is a dual weighbridge system used to measure the weight of six- and eight-axle wagons with the maximum total weight of 200T. The individual wagons are provided with enclosed UHF RFID tags. The reading antennas and the ALIEN ALR-8800 control unit are situated in the weighbridge area in the external control panel for weighbridge electronics. As the train unit is passing the weighbridge, the wagons being weighed are automatically matched with their number obtained using the RFID system. As soon as the train unit passes the weighbridge, a full set of information about the train unit and about the individual wagons is available and is automatically transferred to the company's weighing server using the company's optic fibre network and it is then distributed to the end users.
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