In the wake of the hype fueled largely by the promise of widespread RFID adoption for
compliance-driven supply chain management initiatives, manufacturers have started
looking for ways to realize returns either from previous investments in the technology or
from fresh deployments. Indeed, a recent AMR Research survey of discrete
manufacturing companies found that as many as 80% of those surveyed plan to increase
their spending on RFID technology in 2008. According to AMR, some of the areas
expected to ramp up in the coming year include logistics-oriented applications such as
warehouse and yard management, and closed-loop applications such as work in process
(WIP) or container tracking.
Reva Systems Chairman Ashley Stephenson reports that a steady decline in hardware
prices as well as an increase in available standards information have combined in recent
months to produce more business for his company, a maker of RFID infrastructure
management tools and a Managing Automation Company to Watch in 2006.
Stephenson says the most popular RFID applications among Reva's manufacturing
customers are reusable asset tracking for items within their own facilities and tracking
raw materials within their kanban processes.
Ronny Haraldsvik of RFID hardware provider Alien Technology has also seen an
increase in the use of RFID for asset tracking over the past few months, particularly in
aerospace and defense manufacturing industries that need to track and maintain
expensive tools.
Haraldsvik says that with the price of RFID technology (sub-$1,000 readers, for example)
now within reach for many companies, Alien will focus on making the technology easier
to manage. He envisions a day when installing a reader will be no more complicated than
dropping a router into an information network or setting up a WiFi access point.
Manufacturers also have gained a certain level of comfort with the technology, having
heard about successful implementations at facilities similar to theirs, notes Stephenson,
who expects the positive effects from such word of mouth to continue next year.
John DiPalo, senior vice president of product development at supply chain software and
RFID technology provider Acsis, says he sees the beginning of a convergence among the
use of RFID and similar technologies, particularly at the sites of Acsis' pharmaceutical
customers. He says RFID is popular for these manufacturers at the case and pallet level,
but that mashups with other technologies such as 2D or linear barcode make sense for
other points along the supply chain and within distribution processes. In addition, tags
initially intended for a single function can be configured to serve more than one purpose
for track and trace.
John Jordon, president of worldwide field operations at item-level RFID infrastructure
provider Tagsys, agrees that RFID and barcode technologies are not mutually exclusive.
"RFID makes a horrible barcode replacement," Jordon says, adding that it would be
difficult for manufacturers to justify the cost of replacing barcode technology with RFID
tags even if there were a compelling reason for doing so.
"Companies are starting to look at the process rather than only at the technology" when
determining implementation strategies, DiPalo says.
Ravi Pappu, co-founder and head of advanced development at RFID reader provider
ThingMagic, emphasizes the importance of collaboration between customers and vendors
in determining the best use of the technology, which in most cases requires customization
fine tuned for each installation, even among identical types of companies.
"The 'first law of RFID' says that no matter what system or product you have, it's wrong
for someone else," Pappu says.
He believes aggressive R&D efforts during the "hype stage" of RFID, which have
brought read rates and ranges up to levels acceptable for application in manufacturing
facilities, as well as availability of compatible technologies that use much less power than
when they were first introduced, mean that customers are now limited only by their
imaginations when it comes to applying the technology to their unique environments.
"The hype stage was important; it gave people a goal to shoot for," Pappu says.
Stephenson and Haraldsvik agree that RFID product maturity — the reliability of
the equipment itself, as well as the availability of compatible products from several
vendors — has led to an increase in use and adoption of a variety of applications.
And although the initial wave of hype has passed, RFID on the whole is still very much
an emerging market, they say.
"I still read crazy articles about RFID," Stephenson says, "It would be great if the
growing adoption [rate] intersects with the hype."
Here's a look at the 10 most compared radio frequency identification (RFID) hardware products within MA's directory database on ManagingAutomation.com (8/1/07 - 10/31/07):
1. Cobalt HF Family of readers and tags from Escort Memory Systems, featuring multi-protocol functionality; readers feature 1,000 bytes of capacity and a read rate of up to 20 tags/second.
2. UHF Glove / UDL15, Deister Electronic's combination mobile reader and external glove antenna for hands-free applications like picking of goods.
3. TAGSYS C220 RFID Chip from Tagsys, a field programmable transponder well suited for the high volume and low cost requirements of logistic applications where large numbers of objects need to be identified and tracked.
4. Padl-R HF RFID Reader from Tracient Technologies, which provides a combination of interfaces for enterprise IT managers looking to integrate RFID into their systems; the reader enables a mobile workforce to track and monitor mobile assets and is readily integrated with a variety of wireless handheld PDAs or smart phones.
5. SIMATIC RF300 RFID system from Siemens Energy & Automation,
which includes a new read/write device (reader) and two new data carriers (tags); the system is designed for assembly lines, production lines, and conveyor systems.
6. Callisto Proximity Readers from Callisto RFID, high performance proximity readers used in access control applications and available in both long range and short range operating at five volts.
7. SkyeModule M2 HF Reader Module from SkyeTek, which combines HF tag/protocol support and performance with standards-based security for ease of integration, "tag-nostic" support for a wide range of ISO 15693 and 14443 A/B tags, privacy protection and anti-counterfeiting/anti-tampering, and support for proprietary encryption such as Mifare and future algorithms.
8. IDT 250r RFID Label Printer Applicator from ID Technology, which can read, write, verify and apply RFID tags in top, bottom and side label applications; it features a modular component configuration as well as "hot swap" spare assemblies.
9. ThingMagic Mercury 4h by ThingMagic, a RFID reader module for handheld applications that can read any tag, including ISO 18000-6B, EPC Class 0, EPC Class 1 and the new EPC Generation 2.
10. XR480 reader by Motorola Enterprise Mobility, a Gen 2 device featuring dense-reader mode as well as support for the European ETSI 302 208 standard; the reader has the ability to directly host, customize and integrate third-party software applications with support for up to 8 read points.