RFID Technology as a Life Cycle Management Tool in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Industry

New technologies for identifying and sharing information have influenced industries to investigate forms of self-management and information interconnection, allowing the linking of data between production and distribution logistics. The main approach to advanced manufacturing relates to equipping the products and production systems with embedded systems based on intelligent sensors and actuators, enabling the communication and control of the plant in a more efficient way. In this regard, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology is currently considered as one of the leading enabling technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). RFID uses radio frequency to transmit data from a mobile device to a reader. This mobile device is powered by the reader's own power, without the use of batteries, being able to communicate wirelessly or without a specific line, in addition to having processing capacity and internal memory, which enables recording movements and changes to a product linked to it, throughout its life cycle. Several challenges, not only technological ones, are still present for the full operation and interconnection of this technology with the current production systems. The objective of this work is to study the application of this technology in the bottled LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) market, the well-known gas cylinder, in order to create a unique identity for each cylinder sold in Brazil. This unique, automated, wireless reading identification enables process automation in the cylinder filling line, as well as providing insight into the production process and the product distribution logistics chain.