By: Nabil Assila Amran
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Ticketing, purchasing, and inventory management applications with the help of RFID have received a lot of attention in the press. But as the industry converges on standards that enable tags and readers to be reused and as the cost of tags approaches a few pennies per tag, new applications in new areas will develop.
RFID In Automatic Toll-Payment Systems
RFID devices are beginning to replace magnetic-stripe security cards for unlocking doors and granting access to secured areas--especially at facilities with special security needs, such as military installations. The most visible use of RFID, though, is probably the automatic toll-payment systems that rely on readers at toll plazas to scan tags attached to the windshields of passing cars. The reader records the tag's ID and then deducts money from a prepaid account. These systems are designed to allow cars to zip through toll plazas ideally without stopping or even slowing down very much.
RFID in Rental Cars
Looking forward, transportation is just one of the many industries that could benefit from a network of static RFID readers. For example, rental cars with RFID tags fixed to their windshields could store vehicle identification numbers, so rental companies could perform automatic inventories using RFID readers installed in parking lots. This network of readers could also help the companies locate their cars: because the system would have a record of the reader’s location, it could approximate the corresponding car’s location.
RFID in Tracking Inventory
RFID systems are also in the early stages of replacing those familiar Universal Product Code (UPC) bar codes, which are read optically at very short distances to identify products, track inventory and semiautomatize the checkout process at stores. RFID tags, unlike bar codes, can be molded into a product's casing and can use encryption and other strategies to make them difficult to forge. In addition, some RFID tags permit readers to write new data to their onboard memories for later retrieval. For example, each transaction between reader and tag can record the time, date and identity of whoever accessed the tag. This capability should be useful for creating an audit trail in a tag attached to, say, a car, to indicate where it was manufactured and to record each time it was sold, its previous owners, its service history and its accidents.
RFID in Smart Shelf System
RFID tracking technology is starting to be used to follow merchandise as it travels from factory to stores. It will probably be fully established for such applications before it makes deep inroads into stores proper, because warehouse systems are easier to develop and are less likely to fuel public concern that RFID tags in consumer goods could be used to monitor customers once they leave a store. Notably, RFID smart-shelf systems could save money on labor and help to increase sales by ensuring that shelves are always stocked. If the systems monitored stock levels, employees would not have to do it: when the computers sensed that stock was running low, they could automatically alert someone to order more or could place orders directly with the manufacturer. The systems could offer other benefits as well. Because inventory tags are programmable, their data can include information about where the item was manufactured and sold. And like pinned-on magnetic anti-shoplifting tags, the RFID inventory tags could be detected leaving the store to prevent theft (estimated to cost $50 billion a year).
Benetton also aborted its own large-scale in-store test of an inventory system after its plans were criticized by consumers and the media. The Benetton trial would have examined RFID technology's
ability to scan entire cases of tag-bearing clothes in many different colors, sizes and styles and to capture and upload the inventory data to its tracking system, obviating the need for workers to hand-check each garment.
RFID in Airline Industries
The airline industry could also exploit static RFID readers. Currently, airlines annually transport about a billion checked bags—more than a billion passengers boarded planes in 2004, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov) and US Census Bureau (www.census.gov). Only a very small percentage of bags are misrouted (less than 0.5 percent), but airlines still incur a significant cost to recover and deliver misrouted items. Embedding RFID tags in luggage labels could eliminate the need for manual inspection and routing by baggage handlers. A network of readers placed along conveyor belts could read the tags’ routing information and provide feedback to a system that could then direct the bags onto the correct path. Automatic routing could reduce the number of misrouted bags, lowering costs and improving customer satisfaction.
RFID in Healthcare Industry
Additionally, in the healthcare industry, tags could help reduce operational problems. A nurse could read a patient’s tag to learn about his or her medical history and determine the time and dosage for an administered drug. A networked RFID reader attached to a hospital bed could also read the tag and, if combined with centralized patient records, display any known drug-induced allergic reactions for the patient. RFID tags could thus eliminate various data entry errors, drug administration mistakes, and incorrect instructions, which occasionally put patients at risk.
Based on the growing number of business sectors that are beginning to test tag-and-reader systems, some experts in the field believe RFID will be widely used, especially in retail, by 2012. Others say such broad application will not happen until around 2015 or later, when the cost of RFID tags falls enough to make them economically viable for labeling inexpensive consumer products. If we could efficiently network together tag readers that could communicate with RFID sensors in their locality, we could make real-time queries about the physical world and measure environmental effects at a finer resolution than ever before. This could lead to better forecasts, new business models, and improved management techniques.
References:
- www.bin95.com/case_studies/RFID_Technology_Applications.htm
- www.rcdtechnology.com/rfid-applications/
- www.rfid-weblog.com/
- Journal: RFID: A Key to Automating Everything by W.Roy
