After its launching earlier this year at CeBIT 2010 in Germany, Surfaceslab, the worldwide innovative RFID technology of smart surfaces with evident application in bookstores, libraries, footwear shops, clothing, multimedia, amongst many other retail industries, was exhibited in Portugal Tecnológico 2010, last September.

At this exhibition Surfaceslab launched the new product – Kanban Smart Surfaces. This product results from the constant innovation process and is aimed to promote the automation of Kanban processes using RFID UHF technology. With the application of this new product, the traditional process of barcode reading does not take place as the containers are identified with a RFID label or tag with the correspondent association to the type of product and quantity. Once the container is empty and is taken out of the shelf an alert message is sent to the warehouse or supplier triggering the replenishment.

Surfaceslab products results from several years of research and development of Creativesystems – pioneer in the implementation of RFID technology and Vicaima – Portuguese national leader and one of the largest European players in the production of interior doors in cooperation with Instituto de Telecomunicações (Lisbon). The patent pending product is the consequence of that continued effort of technology transfer between academia and industry.

These surfaces are developed and structured to enable any object identified with an RFID tag, in the Ultra High Frequency, and placed on these surfaces to be reliably identified and located in confined spaces.