Archive for January 27th, 2012
Construction Waste-Management Company Uses RFID and GPS
Challande employs AgoraBee’s ChisFleet solution to track the locations of metal trash containers that may be dispersed to dozens or hundreds of customers throughout Switzerland.
Jan. 26, 2012—Swiss waste-management- and material-transportation company Challande et Fils is tracking the locations of its containers and waste bins as they are deposited at construction sites and other locations, using RFID tags on the bins, as well as readers on trucks to transmit GPS location data, along with each tag’s unique ID number. The solution, known as ChisFleet, is provided by AgoraBee, an RFID and GPS technology firm. Since the system’s installation in September 2011, Challande reports, it has reduced the risk of misplaced bins, as well as the amount of time staff members spend trying to identify the locations of the 250 to 400 bins in use at any given time.
AgoraBee developed ChisFleet to help waste-management and construction companies to track assets—such as trash bins—that may be located over a variety of sites, and thus be difficult to track. The firm launched in 2006, initially selling its product exclusively to suppliers before opting to, in some cases, install the system themselves directly for end users. The ChisFleet solution, according to Jari-Pascal Curty, AgoraBee’s managing director, was designed both to incorporate GPS tracking with RFID, and to enable those with their own data-management software to view the locations of their vehicles, as well as those of tagged items.
The system consists of AgoraBee’s Krypton active 2.4 GHz RFID tags made with Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF24L01+ chips, using a proprietary air-interface protocol, that are attached to trailers, trucks or other large cargo. According to Louis Harik, AgoraBee’s head of research and development, the tags beacon with a unique ID number at a preset rate—most typically about 10 seconds.
Receivers, manufactured by AgoraBee, are installed on trucks that capture those transmissions and forward the data to a back-end system via a cellular connection. The receiver also transmits its own GPS position, and in that way, the software can detect and calculate not only which tag is being read, but also its exact location. When a truck deposits a waste bin and drives away, that bin’s tag transmissions are no longer received. The software thus determines that the bin has been unloaded, and links its tag ID number with the vehicle’s location at that time. The tag’s read range is typically up to 30 to 100 meters (98 feet to 328 feet), the company reports.
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Spain stops new energy subsidies in austerity drive
Spain has suspended subsidies for all new power plants using renewable energy and unveiled a draft law to cut public sector deficits to zero within eight years and reduce government debt.
The announcements on Friday came as Mariano Rajoy, the centre-right prime minister who took power last month, sought to convince Spain’s European Union partners that he was ready to impose more economic austerity to bring the country’s public finances under control.
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Mr Rajoy is doing so in the face of an imminent economic recession and rising unemployment, and his ministers have hinted he may seek to renegotiate a target agreed with the EU that would require €40bn of spending cuts and tax rises to nearly halve the budget deficit to 4.4 per cent of gross domestic product this year.
Spanish unemployment rose by more than half a million last year to reach 5.27m, or 22.85 per cent of the workforce, in the final quarter, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). The figures, which are not seasonally adjusted, confirm Spain’s jobs record as by far the worst among the main eurozone economies.
The temporary abolition of energy subsidies – announced by José Manuel Soria, industry minister, after a cabinet meeting – is designed to limit the runaway growth of the country’s electricity “tariff deficit”.
Already at €24bn, the deficit is the accumulated difference between what consumers pay and what it costs suppliers to deliver subsidised electricity, especially from expensive solar power plants. “What is now an energy problem could become a financial problem,” Mr Soria said.
The Spanish cabinet also agreed on a draft “budgetary stability” law that will enforce European measures championed by Angela Merkel, German chancellor, to control eurozone deficits in an attempt to drag the currency union out of its sovereign debt crisis.
The law will implement deficit control measures included in the constitution through an agreement last year between the then Socialist government and Mr Rajoy’s Popular party, which went on to defeat the Socialists in the November general election.
Under the law, public sector debt will not be allowed to exceed the EU’s official but widely flouted limit of 60 per cent of GDP. (Spain’s public debt is expected to reach 70 per cent of GDP this year.) Debt must be reduced if the economy is growing in real terms, and must be cut by at least two percentage points of GDP annually if economic growth exceeds 2 per cent a year or employment is increasing.
Other provisions in the law provide for fines of public administrations that fail to rein in debts and deficits, a measure apparently aimed at the 17 autonomous regional governments blamed for most of the budget deficit overshoot last year.
All state administrations – central, regional and local – will by 2020 have to produce budgets that are structurally balanced or in surplus under European accounting rules, although deficits of up to 0.4 per cent of GDP are permitted in certain cases, and the rules can be waived in case of “natural catastrophes, economic recession or a situation of extraordinary emergency”.
Cristóbal Montoro, budget minister, described the legislation as one of the “major structural reforms” being introduced by the new government. Other reforms will include changes to the old-fashioned labour market and regulations obliging banks to clean up balance sheets burdened with bad property loans.
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Wink appoints sales manager for rotary cylinders
Frank Grzenia has been appointed sales manager for Wink’s complete range of cylinders including rotary dies and magnetic, print, sheeting and perforating cylinders.
‘We are very happy that we could win Frank Grzenia for us,’ said Detlef Geske, sales director. ‘Together, we will work very hard to continue our growth and to gain further market share in the cylinder segment.’
Grzenia, who has worked in the industry since 1989, added, ‘As products become increasingly complex, a professional technical advice to customers is all the more important’.
Pictured: Frank Grzenia, sales manager
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