South African Rail System Adopts Passive RFID For Vehicle, Asset Tracking

Spoornet, the rail transport division of Transnet, a diversified organization for the South African government, will equip their general freight rail fleet of 80,000 wagons with TransCore’s radio frequency identification (RFID)-based Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) technology in a multimillion dollar contract to improve asset maintenance and utilization. TransCore is teaming with ANSYS Integrated Systems to deliver an initial order of 160,000 tags. The project is scheduled for completion in 2008.

Managing rail wagon assets represents a large expense, ranging from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, so consequently, in-transit visibility into their location, status of a load, maintenance status, or avoiding it sitting empty in a rail yard poses an extraordinary communication process among multiple systems in an expansive transportation network. Using wireless RFID technology to monitor railway operational efficiency saves time and money by automating the process of tracking the location and status of railway equipment in both a high and low speed environment.

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