RFID tracking in Abu Dhabi, from KEZAD plants to Yas Island venues

The Khalifa Economic Zones Abu Dhabi (KEZAD), part of AD Ports Group, combine industrial, logistics and free-zone land between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, with Khalifa Port as their maritime gateway. Many of the tenants make things, so RFID here is often about work in progress rather than finished stock: tags on carriers, stillages, moulds and tooling, read as they pass between stations, ovens, inspection and the warehouse.

On the plant map each read point is a marker or zone named as your middleware names it, and each carrier appears at the station where it was last read. An alert rule set to “not updated for N minutes” on the carrier table raises an in-app alert when a carrier has stopped moving, which is often the first sign of a bottleneck; Show on map puts the supervisor at the right station. The Summit Assembly demo shows lines, workstations, WIP and racks together.

Khalifa Port is AD Ports Group’s flagship deep-water port, and its containers have only a short trip into the KEZAD warehouses next to it. KEZAD also describes itself as linked to the Etihad Rail network, so a single receiving area can see port, road and rail arrivals in the same shift.

Portals at each receiving door turn those arrivals into reads. Weight the reads by a quantity field and show them as a heatmap, and the busiest doors and lanes stand out across the shift; switch to markers to see individual pallets. The Eastport demo shows dock doors, yard slots, gate and weighbridge with 1,180 RFID pallets. Spatial Map shows what your reads and WMS say is in the building; it does not connect to customs, port or rail systems.

Abu Dhabi’s airport took the name Zayed International Airport in February 2024, around the official opening of its new Terminal A, which had begun receiving passengers in November 2023. Cargo moves through the same airport, much of it time-critical or temperature-sensitive.

In a cargo shed, RFID tags on unit load devices, dollies and cool containers read at acceptance doors, build-up areas and cool rooms show which zone each one is in and how long it has been there. Temperature probes in the cool rooms can sit on the same floor plan. Spatial Map sits beside your cargo management system and does not follow anything outside your buildings. The Silverbay Airport demo shows the terminal side, with RFID bag tags read from bag drop to the carousel.

Yas Island is Abu Dhabi’s events district: Yas Marina Circuit has hosted the Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix since 2009, and Etihad Arena is an indoor venue for concerts, fights and sport, alongside theme parks and hotels. Exhibitions run on the mainland at the national exhibition centre. Every big weekend moves cases of AV kit, hospitality furniture, barriers and signage from warehouses to venues and back.

Tag the cases, read them at the warehouse door and the venue’s loading dock, and the map shows how many are at each site and which have not been read since the last event. Put the equipment store and each venue in one solution to see the whole pool together. The Crown Park stadium demo tracks kit crates around a venue; Lakeside Convention Center follows crates from dock to stand.