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Printronix Inc.

Over the next few years, radio frequency identification will be required at more and more organizations. Ready or not, your organization will need to investigate how to best deploy and leverage the technology.

Using encoded smart labels (chip-embedded labels) allows tracking along the supply chain – from the manufacturing floor to warehouses to store shelves – to determine what the product is, when it was made, and where it is going. The information contained in the smart label will improve efficiencies by reducing errors in receiving; keeping product in stock; decreasing misplaced inventory, theft, and counterfeiting; and lowering administrative and labor costs. Ultimately, RFID can ensure products are on the shelves when customers want them, increasing revenue for manufacturers and retailers alike. RFID is poised to transform supply chain operations over the next decade.

Don’t Let the Obstacles Get in Your Way

Along with the promise of RFID come the challenges of implementing it. After researching the costs and benefits and developing a business case and deployment strategy, navigating your way through a complicated new system that requires its own hardware and software is a daunting mission. Combined with the complexities of evolving standards, converting today’s bar codes to tomorrow’s electronic product codes (EPCs), and the prospect of how all of this changes the way your company functions, it is easy to understand why you might take a long look before you make the leap to RFID. But there are benefits for those who embrace the technology now.

Set Up a Development Environment

The first step in the implementation process will be to set up a development environment for small-scale, controlled testing of smart labels. As you assemble your lab, it’s valuable to make decisions with the future in mind. If you think of your integration and vendor partners as the long-term RFID team that will successfully guide you through deployment, you can plan accordingly. To help make the right choices, the following can aid you in your partner selection:

Choose Smart Partners

In this early adopter, emerging technology phase of RFID, there are many vendors jumping into the marketplace with promises of expertise to help with your RFID deployment. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to focus on technology- and solutions-based companies that can help you migrate and upgrade in a timely way through each level in your implementation process. It’s essential that external partners on your pilot team are leaders in the field and participating members of EPCglobal, the not-for-profit standards organization leading the adoption and implementation of the EPC Network. The organization hosts business, software, and hardware action groups made up of members from around the world who address hardware and software and a wide variety of business, cost, and performance issues in an effort to create standards for multiindustry applications. EPCglobal members include leading retailers, suppliers, technology companies, and the Department of Defense. As a participant in EPCglobal, your RFID partner can better understand your business requirements for effective implementation; can influence developments and progress by integrating technical, cost, and performance needs into standards; and will keep your organization’s program up to date. Look for vendors who can provide a fully integrated, cost-effective development environment along with:

• Experience and core competencies;
• Solution builder commitment;
• Aftersales support; and
• Upgradeable program, printers, and firmware.

Start Making Smart Labels

Since labels carry the passwords that get your carton into the warehouse, they are the logical starting point for your pilot program. Software migration tools can provide a seamless transition to encoding and printing smart labels without high reprogramming costs, actual EPC numbers, or changing anything within your front-end or back-end applications. These tools include a suite of applications that convert standard UPC and Global Trade Item Number data from bar code print data and allow you to simultaneously encode and print them into the RFID tag. The application’s flexibility allows you to select from many common shipping label templates such as ITF-14, Code 39, and UCC/EAN-128. And while the codes printed on the labels won’t be the final EPC (as standards are still being developed), they can be written, printed, and verified for this initial testing phase.

Label Testing

Now that you can encode smart labels without having to wait for EPC numbers, you have the means to test read ranges, read speeds, and data capture. You can determine the distance from which the labels can be read, whether RF signals are affected by the products themselves, and variations to read angle and distance. As you become familiar with optimum read speeds and work out the intricacies of capturing and reading data, you will arrive at solutions to improve and maximize system accuracy.

The Science of Label Placement

Package contents and label configuration, design, space, and angle can all make a difference between a 100 percent read rate and a 0 percent read rate. You will need to keep these factors in mind as you determine the placement of your smart label on the carton or case: package design, label requirements, package contents, and surrounding environment.

Labels: the Good, the Bad, the Quiet

A label is considered good when the RFID data is written to the tag correctly, the correct image is printed, and content data is verified against the source. If the printed and encoded data can’t be verified against the source, the label is considered defective and voided from the system. To ensure that no EPC numbers are lost, the printer should be programmed to clearly overstrike and void the defective label and print another label using the same EPC data. When a verified tag can’t be read from a normal distance, it’s called a quiet label. In some cases a quiet label may be the result of a defect in a specific label within a roll of good labels. Your media/printing system should be designed to distinguish between quiet and nonquiet labels, removing yet another source of error. A quiet label needs to be eliminated from use if you want to achieve 100 percent read rates.

Involve a Knowledgeable Systems Integrator

RFID is uncharted territory, and it may be a long journey to full deployment. You will need an experienced guide who understands your existing operations, processes, and systems. Your integration partner should have the industry knowledge to help you develop an implementation plan that defines all tasks, responsibilities, milestones, and related costs, and assist in establishing realistic performance targets. The integrator is your co-pilot, so test their background in supply chain solutions, look at their credentials in technology, and ask about their work relating to the Wal-Mart mandate.

Integrate Various Software Applications

In this phase of test and validation, integrating RFID technology into your ERP (enterprise resource planning) and WMS (warehouse management systems) throughout your operations allows you to preview the extent of capabilities RFID brings to your enterprise and the supply chain. Because RFID supports such areas of your business as resource planning, parts purchasing, order tracking, customer service, storage management, transportation management, and accounting – by providing extensive, real-time, accurate information – it’s predicted that you will realize 30 to 40 percent gains in efficiency. For smooth sailing, early in your vendor partner selection, select equipment that fully integrates with leading WMS and ERP suppliers. When looking for a software provider, look for companies with complete turnkey solutions such as Manhattan Associates.

Integrate With Warehouse Infrastructure

Simulate a dock door and a conveyor with a few fixed-mount readers. (You might also choose to begin your testing in the established lab of an integrator partner for this initial phase.) Products such as Alien Technology’s RFID Development Kit with reader, antenna, and development system software will accelerate your progress through this phase.

Validate Your Vendor Choices

As you approach your pilot program implementation, evaluate how your equipment is working for you. No matter what manufacturer you team with, there are expectations you should maintain for RFID. Make sure your printer partner offers:

• Complete encoding solutions;
• RFID extensions and drivers;
• Easy integration into WMS and label generation software;
• The ability to scale your development environment to multiple printers in multiple locations to test large-volume label runs;
• Enterprise printer management software to monitor and configure all your smart label printers and RFID encoders;
• Certified smart labels in unlimited quantities; and
• A rapid development team for your unique label design.

Reader partners should be able to provide RFID solutions for various global frequency requirements as they evolve. During the implementation phase, readers can be positioned depending on your needs at various locations, such as shipping and receiving dock doors, product routing conveyors, picking and sorting configurations, and forklifts. Handheld readers facilitate inventory counting, locating and reconciliation, and should have the ability to capture both bar code and RFID.

Look for vendors who can offer solutions to your various global and form factor requirements. Support services should be available to assist with integration updates, repairs, spare parts, and technical support requirements.

For all vendors, make it a point to find out their global support strategy, and ask if they have established alliances with market-leading partners in RFID project planning and deployment strategies.

Confirm Your Label Solutions

During test and validation, determine where to position labels on different product types and how to repeatedly apply them as volume increases. As an example, for one particular beverage case-packaging application, we found that tag placement was critical to within one-quarter of an inch to achieve 100 percent read rates. Look for partners that are engaged in RFID packaging research, such as MIT’s Auto-ID Labs and other organizations.

Fearless Piloting

The objective of the pilot program is to develop a predictable and scalable system. This requires you to achieve precision in placement, output, and performance. Careful measurement and documentation throughout this phase will facilitate problem solving with your partners and selected customers, to ultimately eliminate errors and establish processes. You will want to mark critical milestones to chart the development of your system. Along the way, stop and assess your solutions – is smart label placement formulated and confirmed for different products? Should you run parallel pilots for different divisions of your business because of significant differences in processes? Is it time to incorporate additional smart label printers within your system? The pilot phase is the time to tool up for handling greater volumes with real-life criteria in actual working environments. You will build knowledge and confidence in the system as you work out the everyday demands faced by your business, even though you are applying the tests to a limited volume.

The Fun Begins

Though full RFID deployment is still ahead of us, hundreds of companies are well on their way. Whether you are just starting or already piloting, several issues considered in your early decision making will facilitate a more efficient, successful implementation.

Carefully Select Vendors

Technology is evolving, standards are not resolved, and protocols will change. Today’s EPC tag classes will eventually migrate to UHF Generation 2 and beyond. These changes in the industry will mean changes in your equipment. So choose a vendor offering asset protection to save you money, with upgradeable firmware and scalable solutions so you won’t have to start over. We suggest that you ask a set of pertinent questions to help you make informed decisions about product and vendor selection:

• How many pilots are they working on?
• Can they articulate examples and case histories from their experiences related to the Wal-Mart requirement?
• Are they a global company to manage your international locations?
• Do they offer formally organized professional services such as label design and verification, on-site assessments, training, and integration and migration consulting?
• Do they provide flexible system integration and migration capabilities?

Beyond Mere Compliance

During the implementation phase, you will explore opportunities for new efficiencies and build metrics into your processes to quantify improvements, forming a foundation for ROI. This reiterates that the solutions you pick for limited pilot runs need to be scalable, robust, and industrial strength so that they will be cost-effectively deployable in large scale in the future. And even if your processes include manual application of labels for shipping (slap and ship) at this point, it’s important to keep your future automation capabilities in mind as your system expands.

As you move beyond the pilot stage, total quality control – providing validation and verification – is among the most important building blocks to achieving high ROI with both bar codes and RFID. With validation built into the printing equipment, you can expect 100 percent scannable bar codes that correlate with 100 percent readable RFID labels. With no manual intervention, your system will be able to check every label against your database to verify that what you read on the label is actually what it should read. If there is a discrepancy, it will immediately back up, cancel, and overstrike the label, and print a correct replacement.

In addition, the ability to archive smart label data into a database for enterprise management brings the highest level of visibility and value to your operations. Through data capture, nearly instantaneous visibility of supply chain activity allows you to make more accurate sales projections and purchasing decisions. EPC data, once integrated into your database, can provide time, location, and batch information, that when passed back into the system, can identify and locate specific products at any point in the supply chain.

Smart Labels Will Get Smarter

Developments in RFID technology will continue to yield larger memory capacities, wider reading ranges, and faster processing. The cost of the technology, which has historically been an obstacle to largescale adoption, is rapidly improving as leading-edge adopters realize the benefits and expand their implementations. Like memory for PCs, we can’t predict what the cost will be for chips in the near or distant future. But we do know that their growth and speed will increase, rapidly creating capabilities that will have a major impact on supply chain operations in the next few years. We urge you not to let the uncertainties or the cost of tags keep you from learning about RFID and its benefits to your business. We are currently in the early adopter phase; the uncertainties will be solved in time. Adopting RFID now affords you the opportunity to grow with the technology, to define and refine your system, and realize the benefits sooner. You don’t have to worry about how to get started – you aren’t alone, and there are easy-to-follow solutions. With integration and vendor partners you can trust, your route to RFID is a wellmarked one.