| CRBJ Charter Member: |
|
|
| CRBJ Home > May 2006 | ||||||||
RFID is revolutionizing many business sectorsBy Jill Carlson
Chances are you've used radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology and haven't even realized it. If you have an employee ID card that you swipe through a reader, if you gas up your car at a Mobil station, or if you travel the Illinois toll way and use an IPass, you are using RFID. RFID tags have a computer chip that can store and process data, and an antenna that transmits and receives digital information via radio waves. Implantable RFID chips can be put into animals and people as a way to store and relay information. The history of RFID Radio frequency identification dates back to World War II. Radar was discovered in 1935 and was used by Germany, Japan, Great Britain and the United States to warn of approaching planes. But there wasn't a way to identify if an approaching plane belonged to an ally or an enemy. The British developed a friend or foe system, placing a transmitter on all of their planes that communicated that the aircraft was friendly. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, research in the United States, Japan and Europe helped to advance RFID technology, and companies began selling antitheft systems in retail settings. In the 1970s, the U.S. Energy Depart-ment asked Los Alamos National Laboratory to devise a technique to keep track of nuclear material. The lab also developed an RFID system to track cattle and prevent a farmer or veterinarian from accidentally giving two doses of medicine to one animal. Wal-Mart's mandate In 2003, Wal-Mart mandated that their top 100 suppliers use RFID tags on all cases and pallets entering its distribution centers to better track products and increase efficiency. According to a press release issued by Wal-Mart in 2003, suppliers were to comply with this mandate by the end of 2005, and they anticipate having international suppliers using RFID technology by the end of this year. Target and the Department of Defense also are asking their suppliers to use RFID. Madison-based Pacific Cycle, supplier of Mongoose and Schwinn bikes to Wal-Mart, Target and Sears-Kmart, jumped on the technology when the Wal-Mart mandate was issued. Mo Moorman, director of marketing and public relations for Pacific Cycle, said the company uses RFID to manage its inventory. Milwaukee-based manufacturer Rockwell Automation has been using RFID for more than 20 years. According to Joe Owen, industry solutions marketing manager in the food and beverage department at Rockwell, the majority of the early RFID work was in the automotive industry for paint shop and error-proofing applications. When Wal-Mart started to require the use of RFID, Rockwell saw customers in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical and consumer products sectors increase their use of the technology. "Though their interest was based primarily on their desire to please Wal-Mart, many of these sectors were exposed to the use of RFID as a way to improve their existing internal processes," Owen said. Rockwell worked with Wells Dairy in Lemars, Iowa, the world's largest ice cream manufacturing facility, to help identify areas where the dairy could use RFID in the ice cream production process. "The object was to create a return on investment that would help offset the cost of implementing the Wal-Mart mandate," Owen said. Working with a product that goes from room temperature on the production lines to freezing and then to storage in minus-20-degree warehouses was a challenge for Rockwell; the dramatic change in temperature caused the RFID labels, which were affixed before freezing, to peel off. The project took 18 months but Rockwell found the solution to the peeling tags and helped Wells Dairy realize improved business processes with increased productivity, improved shipping accuracy, inventory control and the ability to free-up personnel who used to manually key in the information now in the RFID tag. Capital Region connection In September 2003, a group of potential RFID users, technology developers and UW researchers formed the UW RFID Industry Workgroup, which is part of the UW E-Business Consortium. More than 40 companies in the group share lessons learned and best practices for RFID strategy and implementation. Participating Capital Region businesses include American Girl, Kraft Foods, Lands' End, Promega Corp., Sargento Foods and Sub-Zero Freezer Co. Other participants include Brunswick Corp., 3M, ABC Computers, BEA Systems, Rockwell Automation and Zebra Technologies. On the agenda at workgroup meetings are results from experiments conducted in the UW RFID Lab in the Engineering Centers Building. Wisconsin-based companies Autologik, Dorner Manufac-turing, Rockwell Automation and Red Prairie are founding members of the lab and contributed $500,000 in software to use for research and education. "The close coupling of the activities at the UW RFID Lab with Wisconsin manufacturers leads to better understanding and potentially wider use of the technology. The manufacturers get an opportunity to experiment with the technology, converse with experts and consider alternatives. We believed in the process enough to contribute a large amount of control equipment and engineering effort to help prime the pump," said Owen of Rockwell Automation. Types of RFID tags There are two types of RFID tags: active and passive. Active tags are powered by an internal battery and are usually read/write capable, meaning that data can be rewritten and/or modified. Active tags, said UW RFID Lab Director Alfonso Gutierrez, cost between $35 and $40 each and are about the size of a cell phone. Passive tags operate on power generated from the reader, are much lighter than active tags, and have an unlimited life. The drawback is that their read range is not as far as the range for active tags, so the reader must be of a higher intensity to capture information. The passive tags cost only about 15 cents each. "The leash cannot be more expensive than the dog," Gutierrez said. Medical applications UW Hospital and Clinics uses RFID as part of a patient safety system in the hospital. "We've been using RFID bracelets for patients who are at risk for wandering - those with Alzheimer's or those who lose their orientation easily, so the unit staff can be alerted by the alarm that sounds if a patient gets to a perimeter door of the unit," said Ron Brefka, engineering manager at UW Hospital and Clinics. Sarah Carlson, director of media relations for St. Mary's Hospital, said that on March 29, the Family Birth Center implemented the Hugs Infant System. Produced by Verichip Corp., the system uses a low-frequency radio ID tag attached around the infant's ankle. An alarm sounds if someone tries to leave the Family Birth Center with a protected infant without authorization. BloodCenter of Wisconsin (BCW), based in Milwaukee, is working with UW-Madison's RFID Lab in an effort to monitor blood and blood products across the entire supply chain, said Rodeina Davis, vice president of information services. Other RFID applications • The recent announcement by SITA, a Switzerland-based technology consultant for the airline industry, that more than 30 million bags were lost by airlines worldwide last year could help to increase RFID usage by airlines. SITA is promoting RFID to track luggage to reduce the number of misdirected bags. The tags could also be used to determine if luggage has been loaded onto a plane but the passenger who checked the bags has not boarded the plane. While very few airlines have implemented RFID, one airline, Asiana Airlines in South Korea, worked with California-based BEA Systems last year to develop and test the technology. According to a case study done by BEA Systems, Asiana accelerated baggage handling times, minimized sorting errors, displayed baggage arrival time and prevented baggage loss and theft. The airline was also able to check passenger information to identify potentially dangerous baggage, possibly thwarting hijackers or bombers. • The federal Government Ac-countability Office released a report in October 2004 regarding the handling of food recalls. Their findings stated that food recalls are increasing and are handled ineffectively. Tainted food is not only dangerous for consumers, it can be devastating for companies because it generates negative publicity, damages the company's brands and exposes companies to potential lawsuits. In an article in RFID Journal, Gutierrez said that the use of RFID would help companies involved in product recalls find tainted goods. Is Big Brother tracking you? RFID technology is not without controversy. A Yahoo "RFID privacy" search garnered 22,800,000 hits, including the announcement that the State Department now requires new passports to have RFID chips with the name, nationality, gender, date of birth, place of birth and a digitized photo of the passport holder. Civil libertarians and privacy advocates have raised alarms about this use of the technology. Another use that has provoked concern regarding invasion of privacy involves VeriChip Corp. and its VeriMed microchip. The microchip is the size of a piece of rice and can be encoded with medical records of a person in whom it is implanted. Candidates for VeriMed include people with Alzheimer's, coronary artery disease, diabetes, stroke and organ transplant recipients. The chip can prove helpful in emergencies if the victim is unable to speak. jilly@chorus.net madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
|
|||||||
