The year of RFID penetration

Nowadays everything is labeled - from medicine bottles to surfaces and people and even cows. As more suppliers join the market, the technology penetrates deeper into the back office systems, supply chains and inventory management, and the benefits it provides in the field of productivity of advanced organizations increase.

Compilation of news published in InformationWeek during the month of January on the subject of RFID

What do scooters from Italy and diapers from the USA have in common? Radio frequency identification tags, of course. IBM has announced two new customers that will use its software for radio tracking of products: a subsidiary of the car manufacturer Honda, which manufactures scooters in Italy, and an American packaging company called Filant, which packs a variety of products - From breakfast cereals to packages of diapers, the company Honda Italia Industriale, which sold 12.7 million in the last year scooters, will use radio frequency identification chips and software from IBM to track parts and tools in its manufacturing plants in Atsa, Illinois. The Philant company from Hamburg, Illinois, will offer various manufacturers plastic packaging with radio frequency identification tags. These packages will make it possible to detect attempts to tamper with products during transport from the manufacturing plant This company also uses IBM software to track the goods in the warehouse.
This is good news for the radio frequency identification industry, which is still taking its first steps. The tags are gaining momentum in certain sectors of the market - Boeing uses them, for example, to track the various components of the planes - but many manufacturers are still reluctant to adopt the technology due to the high price and consumer concerns about tracking. Now, the industry hopes, there are first signs of a more widespread adoption of the technology.
The American weekly InformationWeek published that a series of new and hot technologies, which have already begun to permeate the mainstream, will wink at IT managers in 2007. For example, the technology of radio frequency identification tags (RFID), will significantly increase the data loads in the computing centers in the coming year, since the use of tags will be more common. Internet services, which many see as the "next big thing", will pose many challenges during day-to-day operations, once Internet applications begin to penetrate the organization. The security of the mobile devices will be more complex, given the need to deal with new and more complex threats.

However, the most significant challenges will probably be posed by two technologies that will gradually gain a dominant status in large organizations - virtualization and advanced graphics processors (especially following the expected penetration of Windows Vista). Below is an overview of five technologies that may affect corporate computing in the coming year.

radio frequency identification (RFID)
After many years of promises, many organizations, including Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense, have begun to introduce RFID technology into the mainstream. Today, everything is labeled - from medicine bottles to surfaces and people. As more suppliers join the market, the technology penetrates deeper into the back office systems, supply chains and inventory management, and the benefits it provides in the field of productivity of advanced organizations increase.

RFID technology is not new, and we have known it for over a decade - in one form or another. However, several factors will act in the coming year to promote it. First, new developments help to integrate it into the infrastructure of the supply chains - such as the Tag Acquisition Processor of Reva Systems. These products facilitate the integration of tag data into inventory management systems, supply chains and production. Second, standards are consolidating, making application development and interoperability easier. And finally, the investments of the two organizations that promoted the technology, the American government and the Wal-Mart chain, are beginning to bear fruit - and there is no doubt that the time has come to implement the technology.

Anyone who wants to implement RFID technology needs three main components: scanners, tags and warehouses. The transition from barcodes to radio tags is relatively easy, but the potential problems associated with radio transmissions and the deployment of wireless networks throughout the organization must be taken into account. Extensive warehouse and inventory management experience is also needed in order to collect the data and integrate it into supply chain applications. "The impact of RFID technology on the supply chain is similar to that of ERP technology on the organization. It is about central management, transparency and automation," says Marlo Brock, senior partner at Avatar Partners, which deals with the implementation of CA systems.

It is also important to distinguish between the different types of goods to which the tags will be attached. There is a big difference between dishwashers and disposable razors: if two packs of razors are lost, the damage is much less than if two dishwashers are lost. A successful implementation of RFID technology also guarantees a significant improvement in the systems that help decision-making.
New: RFID ink for marking cattle heads - and humans
The process developed by the Somark company allows animals to be imprinted with "tattoo inscriptions" using a geometric array of tiny needles and an ink cartridge ● The imprint can be read from a distance of up to 1.2 meters
Kay. si. Jones, InformationWeek
A start-up company called Somark Innovations has developed an ink for radio frequency identification - as a replacement for conventional RFID tags and chips. So far, experiments have been conducted in marking the heads of cattle and laboratory mice. The ink developed by the company is safe for use on animals, the company said last week, and the information can be read through the hairs of the fur.

The technology can be used to identify cows and track them, thus reducing the fear of "mad cow" disease. According to the company's chief scientist, Reimus Mays, the experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the method and proved its safety. "We have proven that animals can be marked with RIFD ink safely, without the need for a microchip, and read the information through the hair," Mays said.

According to Mark Pidinovski, one of the founders of the company, the ink does not contain metals, it is colorless and the imprint is not visible at all. He refused to specify the composition of the ink, but according to him its use is completely safe, both in animals and in humans. The amount of information that can be imprinted depends on the area of ​​available skin, but cattle heads are usually marked, according to the instructions of the US Department of Agriculture, with a 15-character identification number.

The process developed by the Somark company allows animals to be imprinted with "tattoo inscriptions" using a geometric array of tiny needles and an ink cartridge. The stamping, according to Pidinowski, takes five to ten seconds and there is no need to shave the fur hair. The imprint is made in the skin layer and can be read from a distance of up to 1.2 meters.

"Just as the rays of light are reflected from a mirror, so is the information projected from the imprint," Pidynowski said. "With the help of the tag, you can track the cow, know where she was, who she came in contact with and what she ate." Cattle thieves cannot tell which cow is marked, but the authorized officials will be able to easily trace the origin of each marked cow and know if it has been stolen. According to Pidinowski, RFID ink is much more effective than metal tags attached to the cow's ears, because the metal tags can be easily removed.

The technology can confirm that the origin of a certain piece of meat is from a cow that has not been injected with hormones, but Pidinovsky reassures - while the meat is being chewed, the information breaks down and it is no longer possible to track who ate the marked piece. However, according to Pidinovski, the technology can help track soldiers: "It is possible to easily determine who belongs to our forces and who belongs to the enemy forces, and save the lives of soldiers."

The Somark Innovations company was established in 2005 and operates in an incubator for developing technologies in Set. Louis, USA. The company is now seeking to raise venture capital and intends to sell licenses to use the technology to mark lab animals, dogs, cats, cuts of meat and even soldiers.

Commentary - the last barrier to the RFID era in Israel
The decision of the Ministry of Communications to open the frequency domain for the use of RFID will accelerate the entry of the new era in the field of managing various and complex systems and processes, which will probably replace the old barcode
Benny Bialik, VP of Marketing and Amnon Feldman, VP of Sales, Galbital

At the beginning of the month, the Ministry of Communications announced the opening of the 915 MHz to 917 MHz frequency range for the use of RFID UHF technology, which is a narrow frequency range, among the frequencies in which the cellular companies operate. Until the publication of the announcement, the Ministry of Communications actually limited the use of the aforementioned frequency range in open areas, and the approval was only possible after comprehensive tests were carried out to make sure that the RFID equipment would not damage or interfere with the normal operation of the cellular networks.

Companies that wanted to operate RFID equipment in the UHF field received a permit only for conducting pilots, which were carried out under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications. The Ministry's decision to allow the use of the 915 MHz to 917 MHz frequency range actually opened the era of RFID in Israel as well, with a long delay compared to the advanced countries in the world, which have already been implementing projects based on RFID technology for over two years.

The use of UHF RFID technology will now allow a large number of applications to be implemented in many fields: medicine, military, logistics, transportation, industry, defense, transport, libraries, civil aviation, conferences and more.

The analysts say that in terms of the possible applications of RFID technology, "the sky is the limit". In other words, the use of RFID technology will lead to a significant improvement in the efficiency and savings of most of the processes that have been carried out until now manually or by using barcode tags and will jump the market forward, towards new and interesting developments, which will lead to a new awakening in the market, which in the last two years has increasingly concentrated on providing solutions and developments for the mobile phone environment.

In October 2004, Gartner prepared a forecast for the 10 most significant technologies for the coming years (Top 10 technologies). Among the other technologies mentioned, the topic of RFID took a place of honor. In a survey conducted among a few hundred managers regarding the hot technologies that will be in 2007, the managers mentioned RFID as one of the hot technologies that they intend to test this year.

RFID has long been the next sure direction for managing various and complex systems and processes. Logistic transportation systems, inventory management, inventory management. Management of production systems. Monitoring items and bodies in real time and the hand is still tilted. All this while connecting and integrating the information in the existing corporate information systems.

In the same way that other technologies led to transglobe movements that changed our daily lives, such as the cell phone, bar code systems and the Internet, so RFID-based systems are establishing themselves today as the next revolution, especially in the areas of logistics management and operation and production control systems.

In Israel, several important RFID UHF pilots have already been carried out for the army, in industrial plants and academic institutions. All of these have proven that the technology meets the needs and significantly improves the processes. The removal of the last barrier by the regulator will allow the acceleration of the entry of the RFID era into the Israeli market.