FloraHolland: registration system lock plates

About trolleys and lock plates

The trolley is the most important carrier for flowers and plants within FloraHolland, one of the largest flower auctions in the world. It can be used, taken along and supplied by producers and buyers at 8 locations in the 6 market’s auction sites. Outside the auction premises, the trolley can only be used in case it is equipped with a rented lock plate, which is a rectangular lock mechanism to secure and identify the trolley. 

From scanning per piece to the simultaneous scanning of 100 pieces

Each lock plate has a barcode and a UHF tag that can be linked to the customer who takes the trolley with him. When the trolley is returned, the link is removed so that the lock plate can be passed on to someone else.

The lock plates were initially equipped with a barcode only, implying that each lock plate was to be scanned separately. Today, the manufacturer integrates a passive UHF transponder that can be read from a distance by an RFID reader.

Aucxis equipped the desk of the distribution offices with a built-in POS (Point Of Sale) antenna, over which the lock plates can be read separately or in boxes. Furthermore, we furnished a small device on which signatures can be scanned. In this way, the registration of the distribution is done completely paperless. The possibility to scan the barcodes with a barcode scanner was kept as a back-up system.

Aucxis middleware transfers the scanned data – lock plate data, plus the graphical file of the signature – to the software that is used by FloraHolland to register the distribution of the lock plates.