The NA 2008 Show, sponsored by The Material Handling Industry of America, occurred April 21-24 at Cleveland’s I-X Center, featuring manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, logistics and IT solutions for the supply chain. During the show, Tom Park, CTO for Rath Information Systems, Bellefontaine, Ohio, and Scott Silver, owner of Midwest Sales and Marketing, Springfield, Ohio, updated attendees on the latest RFID software and monitoring product developments from their partner, Analytica (www.analytica-usa.com/rath). Following are highlights of their report.
Any application of RFID needs to result in obvious business benefits. The last few years have seen several developments that have sped up the adoption of this technology:
• The emergence of major consumer applications that bring RFID from an experimental technology into the mainstream. As it gains understanding and credibility through highly visible consumer applications that prove its effectiveness, its place as a solution in supply chain automation also grows.
• The development of “smart labels,” a lower-cost, easily integratable version of RFID tags that is beginning to take off on paths where bar codes cannot travel. It has been used and developed by a variety of markets, including automotive, government, manufacturing and healthcare, utilizing it for inventory management, asset tagging and other process control information systems.
RFID systems communicate via radio signals that carry data either uni-directionally or bi-directionally. When a transponder enters a read zone, its data is captured by the reader and can then be transferred through standard interfaces to a host computer, printer or programmable logic controller for storage or action.
This is where Analytica’s unique software provides added value. Aries is a very sophisticated software program offering end-users a complete visual of their facilities and landscapes in accordance to the hardware installed on site. It is a rules-based middleware that gathers information, applies rules, directs information, provides visualization and integrates with existing ERP products.
In addition, Analytica developed a worldwide tracking mechanism to provide the end-user with the ability to track and look up information on multiple facilities worldwide in real-time.
Currently, major retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Target, are in the process of demanding their largest suppliers—especially electronics manufacturers—switch all existing bar coding systems to RFID-based systems. Furthermore, the government through the Department of Defense, has required all products be tagged on the actual product, carton or crate to match their tracking specifications, and all automotive manufacturers are using it on some scale.
Anlaytica is helping to take RFID technology to the next level through the healthcare industry and continued presence in the manufacturing industry. Imagine if an active tag was placed with all admitted patients, so that as soon as they passed through a reader at the entrance of a room, all of their current information was available to the attending nurse or doctor. What if as items were taken off shelves to be used for a particular surgery, that information was immediately cataloged for the billing department?
What if manufacturers no longer had to struggle to ensure all packed goods leaving their loading docks were accounted for and directed to the correct location? What if you were able to measure and format your manufacturing process by being able to follow how long a simple widget developed into a completed product, and was ready to be shipped—without any data entry at all? Perhaps a CEO wanted to check on the status of production at an operation that was located in South America while he was sitting at an airport in Chicago? These are the kinds of revolutionary applications that Analytica is attempting to bring into the marketplace.
The RFID solution is scalable and viability has been proven in numerous pilots in manufacturing and the healthcare industries. This has been accomplished through significant in-the-field RFID solution testing.
The possibilities in the marketplace are limitless, much like the capabilities of the software. What’s more, the hardware costs have decreased significantly, making a product that was out of reach for many companies just a few years ago, now attainable.
For more information, call (937) 593-1911.
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