恭喜发财

“Congratulations and be prosperous”

Chinese New Year is the celebration of the new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The date is not fixed exactly, but the first day starts when the new moon appears between January 21st and February 20th. The evening before Chinese New Year families gather together for a reunion meal, to celebrate, and exchange gifts. The following days tempels are visited, forefathers are honoured, and rituals are observed.

RFID and Returnable Transport Items

A Returnable Transport Item (RTI) is anything that can transport products or goods in bulk, such as pallets, roll cages, Unit Load Devices (ULDs), reusable plastic containers, totes, trays, ingredient bins, dollies, IBCs (i.e. medium-sized bulk containers), gas cylinders, drums, etc.

The use of RTIs has proven indispensable in the transportation sector, as well as in the consumer goods industry. However, RTIs are also subject to supply chain problems, waste, loss, operational inefficiencies, billing and accounting errors, global traceability regulations, and rising management costs.

Innovative reuse of cups instead of recycle

SwapBox offers companies, restaurants, petrol service stations, hospitals and government offices the chance to re-use plastic cups rather than to recycle them. But in order to do so, the cups need to be collected, washed and distributed after use. SwapBox offers this washing-as-a-service, allowing their customers to comply with the European Directive on Single-Use Plastics (applicable from July 2024).

However, the end-users of the cups are not yet familiar with the implications of the regulations. So cups get lost, accidentally disposed of, or taken out of the washing loop. SwapBox had the idea of creating a frictionless return system which is deposit free, but which does familiarise end-users with the concept of returning and washing the cups. With EasyLogic SwapBox developed a system which:

Quality Control for Medical Kits

EasyLogic was involved in a number of projects in the medical supplies business, where we use RFID to ensure full quality control of products before they are shipped to customers.

This concerns the production of medical test kits, containing tubes or pipettes of test liquid, swabs, needles, gloves, masks and other elements according to a “recipe”. Essential items are tagged with an RFID label, the presence or absence of other elements is verified using a precision weighing scale.

Technical Equipment Rental

Our customer is an international company which rents out industrial equipment such as generators, battery and energy storage systems, cooling and industrial heating equipment. This equipment is used to provide power or heating and cooling to temporary sites such as construction sites, festivals and events, but also to data centres or manufacturing industry.

This equipment does not operate stand-alone. Generators need fuel, hoses to transport the fuel to the generator, power cables, distribution panels, control equipment and cabling. If a single item is missing, operation is impossible.

Solarpanels

EasyLogic installed a large number of solar panels on our roof in 2023. Combined with replacement of TL lights by LED, more energy efficient printers and IT equipment, and a good monitoring system our solar panels cover our electricity usage through the day. Even up to two electric vehicles are fully charged with our solar electricity.

This way EasyLogic contributes to a sustainable future.

Integrated RFID Reader

EasyLogic has developed RFID systems, with embedded software, combined with a Teltonika 4G router. Together with suitable RFID antennas this system can be installed in your business, or with your customers, to track and trace goods in your supply chain, automatically order new parts, or any other standard RFID activity.

Requiring no special skills to install and configure, the reader connects with the EasyLogic configuration server for software updates, automated monitoring of its operation, and retrieves all details of its operating configuration, including endpoints for the transactions and any required security certificates. The transactions can be sent to Azure IoT, Cumulocity, or the EasyLogic Track and Trace middelware using REST api’s or MQTT.

Prices

At EasyLogic and IDCARDplaza we have kept prices for certain products, our hourly rates and maintenance and hosting costs at the same level for 5 years.

Now we are faced with significant price increases due to rising energy prices, weakness of the Euro against the US$, and overall inflation. This means that the costs of hosting, equipment, transport, etc. will increase significantly, but also our personnel costs. Some suppliers increase prices to us by 12-14%.

Chip shortage

You have undoubtedly heard about the chip shortage in the car industry as a result of the Corona crisis. Now you are probably wondering: “What does that have to do with my keyfob or RFID equipment”?

To summarize, car manufacturers thought that Corona would cause them sell fewer cars and they have greatly reduced their orders for automotive electronics and chips. But at the same time, the demand for chips for PCs, laptops, smartphones, playstations, servers for data centers and the like increased, partly due to people working from all over the world. The chip manufacturers shifted their production capacity from microcontrollers and chips used in cars to other chips.

The car industry has been using it for a long time. The use of RFID (radio frequency identification) to identify parts and subassemblies. The “Build-to-Order” process, where each product that comes of the line has its own unique combination of options and colours would be almost impossible or too expensive without automatic identification of parts.

But RFID is not just applicable for products with extensive configuration (like computersystems, bicycles or airplanes). RFID is useful when keeping large amounts of stock is too expensive. “Just-in-Time” environments. Or in those cases where fixing mistakes later on in the assembly process simply is too expensive.