Effective RFID goes unnoticed

By Sean Loving SkyeTek and Tony Anast SkyeTek

RFID made its debut in dedicated applications, where tags and readers were quite obvious. Enabled applications, where tags and readers designed deeply into processes work silently to improve information flow, have created the real breakthrough for RFID. This article discusses that transition and some examples of applications that benefit.

Competitively successful businesses today have two types of processes: good ones they have implemented already; and better ones they are modeling and plan to implement. Rather than an end unto itself, RFID represents a potential advantage on the margins of hundreds, perhaps thousands of best practices across many vertical markets. Good RFID solutions go unnoticed because rather than disrupting the flow of otherwise working processes, they fit cleanly into existing physical applications, delivering tangible results by connecting hard assets with electronic information either more efficiently than before or at points where it was previously impossible. 

From dedicated to enabled
Far from going unobserved, most RFID solutions today are very much in the foreground. At SkyeTek, we view these deployments as “dedicated” RFID applications, which generally use RFID readers and software that have been designed and built specifically for a single application in a vertical market. 

Dedicated RFID applications are a natural byproduct of an emerging technology whose early evolution is tied to market-specific applications. However, the size and cost of dedicated readers obviated the possibility of embedding RFID within existing applications. What emerged instead was a small number of dedicated RFID applications such as supply-chain optimization, where barcode replacement presents the largest and most tangible opportunity for RFID.  This class of applications, known as Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC), is dominated by equipment that looks and feels as if it was designed specifically to collect data.

As a substitute for barcodes, RFID can be very effective with striking potential. RFID tags offer physical advantages over barcodes – they do not require a direct line of sight, can have a longer read range, and can provide location-based information that barcodes simply cannot offer. RFID tags can be used as miniaturized databases that neatly encapsulate the compendium of the host’s entire life cycle, whether the host is a pallet of common auto parts or a rare California condor. As unique identifiers, RFID tags also provide a means for authenticating people, parts, machines, and their interactions. 

While AIDC and other purpose-built applications of RFID represent the past and present of the market, the full potential of RFID will not be met until the “enabled” market matures. In the enabled space, RFID is a function of a business process that can disappear into the background. Whereas the economics of tag-to-reader ratios in excess of 100:1 guide dedicated RFID, ratios of 10:1 and less drive enabled RFID. 

Based on countless industry conversations through the years, SkyeTek has identified at least several hundred unique processes that are already or will soon be RFID-enabled, and each of them emphasizes the modularity, cost, and power consumption of the reader as a core requirement. With the right software, readers can be embedded in existing equipment and applications, enhancing many more processes than simply supply-chain optimization. 

On the shop floor
Semiconductor manufacturing is a highly automated and very complex series of processes.  On the assembly line of one company, workers maintain responsibility for ensuring that specific components are loaded at the correct fabrication machine locations.  Mistakes, though uncommon, are very expensive. An extremely price-sensitive and fast-moving business requires a highly networked solution to alert machinists to errors before they become problems without unnecessarily slowing down production.

Using SkyeTek’s reader modules, this customer designed inconspicuous RFID readers that reside on existing equipment and on the uniforms worn by technicians. When a new production run begins or an old one is resupplied, the sheets of components have been tagged already to identify what the materials are and where they belong. By networking the manufacturing tools and the component information supplied by the readers, from the moment raw materials arrive until the moment they leave as finished products, every person and machine in the factory can know exactly what components they have as well as when and where they need to be loaded. 

In the ER
Things happen fast and furious in an emergency room, where despite the best of intentions and stringent workflow controls, human error still occurs, sometimes with lethal consequences. Enabled RFID in some cases can prove a lifesaver.  One example concerns blood transfusions, where a networked array of tags and readers are replacing barcodes, and the same architecture is applicable to medications and other treatments. 

Within some hospitals, patients wear an RFID-enabled bracelet with a mini-database that includes the patient’s blood type, allergies, prescribed treatment, and continuing course of action. Similarly, an RFID tag is assigned to every blood sample within the hospital’s bank. These tags offer information on blood type, collection time and location, and other information. Doctors and other attendants are equipped unobtrusively with the ability to read and write RFID information. When a blood transfusion is called for, the patient’s tag is updated with the request and a requisition is made through the hospital’s network. The enabled RFID process:

• Ensures the right blood type has been delivered
• Updates the patient’s records to indicate the course of action taken

Above and below ground
In the copper mines of one customer, enabled RFID shows up in the testing, processing, and tracking of mineral batches from their initial excavation to their lab analysis and their resulting paper trail. When ore is pulled out of the ground, an RFID tag is assigned to the lot. The people and equipment that remove it from the earth and deliver it to above-ground scientists supply a living history of the element, without having to step too far outside of their existing processes. Once in the lab, test and measurement information related to the ore can be written to RFID tags that both accompany the sample itself as well as the paper records required for this type of business. Again, because this workflow can be networked in new ways and RFID tags can be hosted within paper documents, updates about a particular lot of materials can advance into the physical manifest in a way that can be read easily by a machine and interpreted – as needed – by a person.

Common threads
As recently as 12 to 24 months ago, the aforementioned applications were difficult to achieve. Since then, RFID readers have become more modular through the development of reader reference designs and better software, which treat hardware components as commodities. That shift has caused a decrease in the cost of hardware, while continuing research and development exerts downward pressure on size, power consumption, and cost. All these improvements feed back into improved modularity and the feasibility of embedding RFID into ever more unobvious places. 

In none of the cases outlined here has RFID become a process unto itself. This point is critical – to be effective outside of the supply chain and at the margins of functional processes, RFID must be present, but appear to vanish. As the market transitions to enabled applications, RFID will prove most valuable, working silently in the background to improve information flow, making noise only when people-to-machine and machine-to-machine communications break down due to an error in a physical process’ inputs.

. . . . .

Sean Loving is chief technical officer of SkyeTek, a privately held company he founded in 2001 that is exclusively focused on providing advanced RFID reader technology in multiple frequencies. Loving is a recognized RFID industry thought leader who for more than a decade has been responsible for many of the innovations and technical accomplishments found today in RFID products and systems worldwide. Previously at the Motorola Indala RFID group, he developed the ScriptTalk pharmaceutical RFID application used in all Veterans Administration hospitals across the United States.

Tony Anast is director of marketing at SkyeTek, where he brings more than 13 years of experience in engineering, marketing, business, and corporate development. Anast holds an MBA from Harvard and a BS degree in Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Anast has held a variety of marketing and engineering roles at Symyx Technologies, Ardesta LLC, Translume, and Level 3 Communications.

To learn more, contact SkyeTek at www.skyetek.com.