Linde to track cylinders using rfid

http://www.investkl.gov.my/Relevant_News-@-Linde_makes_strides_in_Industry_4@0_and_automation_in_the_gas_industry.aspx

At Banting, Linde Malaysia’s semi-automated cylinder filling plant is the first of its kind in South Asia and Asean, with a maximum cylinder filling capacity of over two million cylinders per year. It is one of 11 cylinder filling plants in Malaysia, and serves as the depot for the majority of Linde’s industrial gases clients in the Central Region, although its cylinders can go as far as Pahang and Terengganu. 

Initially, Linde’s cylinder filling plant was located in Petaling Jaya, where cylinders were tracked, emptied, refilled, and painted manually, accounting for a lot of man-hours. In the latter part of 2016, Linde Malaysia’s homegrown Malaysian engineers proposed and developed an Operations Management System (OMS) that would be able to track every cylinder in the plant via individual barcodes, fill cylinders with accurate gas mixtures, while monitoring cylinder pressure, temperature, and quality to specifications.

This high level of traceability using Linde’s Trackabout system translates into complete cylinder stock optimisation, both filled and unfilled, as the operations office can set targets for individual gases or mix types for the shop floor to fulfill. These targets can be tracked and adjusted to customer demands on short notice.

This traceability is pivotal for accountability and quality control (QC) as Linde Banting has as many as 20,000 gas cylinders on site at any given time onsite, and moves 3,000 to 4,000 cylinders in and out daily. Similar to smart parking technology, the OMS can identify available space on site as well as pinpoint the location of filled and unfilled cylinders.

Moving forward, Linde may expedite this process further by introducing RFID to automatically detect the types of gases in the cylinders instead of manual scanning.