Archive for the ‘stickers’ Category
RFID, GPS Bring Visibility to Construction of BP Oil Platform
May. 08, 2013—
Global oil and gas company BP is employing a combined solution utilizing radio frequency identification and GPS technologies to track every component that it ships from its European warehouses to South Korea, as part of a $10 billion project to build a new offshore oil platform for use in the North Sea. Blaine Tookey, a senior technology consultant to the chief technology office of BP’s information technology and services (IT&S) division, described how the solution is being used for the Clair Ridge project at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2013 conference and exhibition, held last week in Orlando, Fla.
BP’s chief technology office has conducted 37 different projects to demonstrate the value of using electronic tracking to locate goods and personnel, implemented over the past two years. This, Tookey indicated, has saved the oil company millions of dollars in costs related to locating equipment and ensuring safety. For example, he explained, the technology is used to identify personnel and assets offshore during an emergency, and to optimize the inventory of equipment within a specific region, which can reduce unnecessary reordering or equipment rental.
BP’s Blaine Tookey
In the case of the Clair Ridge project, BP wanted to ensure that materials were delivered as needed, on time, to Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), the company building the top side of the platform.
The new Clair Ridge platform will be deployed in the North Sea, west of the United Kingdom’s Shetland Islands, in approximately 500 feet of water. BP has an existing platform there, while the upper (above-water) portions of the new platform—to be installed a few miles from the existing rig by 2015—is currently under construction in South Korea. As part of this process, BP orders parts as needed from vendors worldwide. It then receives those components at one of two consolidation centers in Europe, and ships them to its warehouse near the manufacturing site in South Korea, for staging until each part is required for construction. The components amount to billions of dollars’ worth of equipment from hundreds of vendors, Tookey reported.
Before the project began, BP started looking for ways in which to track these parts, in order to ensure they do not end up missing, and that they are available when HHI requires them. The company selected a solution from Mojix, consisting of both GPS and RFID technologies, as well as Mojix’s STAR 3000 RFID reader system (see Mojix Announces the Availability of Its Next-Generation RFID System) and noFilis CrossTalk software. GPS units with satellite communication capability enable the firm to track the location of large equipment while in transit on roads, on rail or at sea, while Mojix’s STAR RFID solution is installed at the South Korean warehouse to locate goods as they enter the facility, and to identify their location.
According to Tookey, BP’s suppliers are attaching a variety of passive EPC Gen 2 RFID tags to such items as skid-mounted equipment compressors, pumps, electronic paneling, vessels or heat exchangers, as well as to smaller items, including valves or instrumentation packed and delivered in crates. “We want to track everything to HHI,” he stated.
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RFID Boosts Safety and Efficiency at UTC Climate, Controls and Security
May. 01, 2013—
United Technologies’ Corp.’s UTC Climate, Controls and Security (CCS) division, which manufactures Carrier heating and cooling equipment, has increased productivity by 30 percent, reduced errors by 80 to 90 percent, and improved safety, thanks to its use of EPC Gen 2 passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags to track components as they are assembled and then shipped. Balaji Suresh, CCS’ materials manager at Carrier, described the deployment today at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2013 conference and exhibition, taking place this week in Orlando, Fla.
CCS provides heating, air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, as well as building controls and automation solutions for the residential market. The company’s plant in Collierville, Tenn., assembles and ships its products in high volume, typically shipping a new unit every five seconds. By deploying RFID, the firm hoped to track component assembly, and to then monitor the shipment of finished goods, in order to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of its trailer-loading process, streamline assembly-line processes and reduce errors related to attaching the wrong components, which can lead to downstream re-working or customer dissatisfaction.
CCS’ Balaji Suresh
The company’s 900,000-square-foot plant employs approximately 1,300 workers, and was named by IndustryWeek as one of the United States’ 10 best manufacturing plants in 2012. Because of the firm’s very fast-paced environment, Suresh explained, a delay of even five seconds could result in the loss of one unit— which, he noted, impacts operating costs. “It was extremely important that an [RFID] solution we chose be reliable enough so that even a five-second delay would not occur,” he told attendees.
The company first began seeking an RFID solution in 2007, Suresh explained, but at that time, the technology’s cost was too high. The company revisited the solution in 2009, and an RFID system was included in the budget for 2010.
CCS selected a solution from S3Edge, with the goal of not interfering with existing manufacturing operations. The company tried several fixed readers, inviting hardware businesses to test their technology on the floor in order to measure performance within a manufacturing environment. According to Suresh, the best performance was achieved by Impinj Speedway Revolution readers, which the company then selected for the installations. It also deployed Motorola handheld readers; Zebra Technologies RFID label printer-encoders; Smartrac ShortDipole wet inlays, with built-in Impinj Monza 5 chips; WS Packaging converted labels; and Xerafy rugged tags.
The company then conducted a trial of the technology through a single production run, compared the RFID solution’s results against those of the legacy bar-code system, and discovered that no units were missed, while visibility was improved by RFID’s use. Following the trial, the company selected Xerafy’s metal-mount tags for attachment to metal carts that transport components. CCS also determined the best position for installing reader antennas, as well as optimal dock-door reader power settings for full-scale production volumes. As each tag was read throughout the manufacturing and shipping process, software interpreted read data and integrated that information with the company’s manufacturing execution system (MES). The solution also utilizes Microsoft BizTalk as RFID middleware for reader management.
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Russian Tag Company Reaches for a Worldwide Audience
Mar. 26, 2013—
Russian semiconductor and RFID tag manufacturer Mikron is seeking to extend its reach beyond its home country, by selling its RFID labels, inlays and cards in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and North America, through its new distributor, German start-up GoGlobal. GoGlobal took on Mikron as its client in January 2013, and is currently in discussions with customers worldwide, most commonly retailers and department stores, for the use of its ultrahigh-frequency (UHF), high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) passive RFID tags, for such applications as logistics, point of sale and electronic article surveillance (EAS).
Mikron’s M-3D inlay is made with an Impinj Monza 4 chip.
Mikron, a division of Sitronics Microelectronics, was founded as a semiconductor manufacturer in 1964, and began its RFID technology development efforts in 2008. The company—according to Andrey Golushko, Mikron’s deputy director general for marketing and sales, and commercial director—is Russia’s largest RFID tag producer, with a capacity of 50 million tags per month, and sells 40 million tags monthly to Moscow Metro alone. The firm launched its RFID business to meet the transit system’s needs, and has since gained additional customers, primarily regional Russian transport companies and ski resorts. Mikron’s tags are also being piloted in China.
Moscow Metro incorporates Mikron’s HF 13.56 MHz paper labels into its paper tickets, which are used once and then discarded by riders at the end of each trip. The ticket’s RFID tag, which complies with the ISO 14443 RFID standard, is read at the gate as each passenger enters a subway platform. Mikron also provides reusable “city cards” for multiple regional transportation authorities in Moscow, Kazan and Novgorod. The cards, made with similar 13.56 MHz RFID labels, allow users to gain entrance to various transit lines, such as buses and trolleys. What’s more, the company is providing entrance tickets for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, to be held in Sochi, and has sold its RFID-enabled tickets for numerous shows, concerts and sporting events throughout Russia.
Mikron’s Andrey Golushko
Upon customer request, the company’s M-Pass HF tag can contain an NXP Semiconductors Mifare, STMicroelectronics SRI, or Infineon chip for use in tickets and cards. The company’s 45-millimeter (1.8-inch) square M-Pass tag for library applications is available with an NXP Icode SLI chip compliant with the ISO 15693 standard. Other Mikron products include the 17-millimeter by 14-millimeter (0.7-inch by 0.6-inch) Near-UHF, a passive EPC Gen 2 inlay made with an NXP G2iM or G2iL chip, and offering a read range of 5 centimeters (2 inches); and the 50-millimeter by 50-millimeter (2-inch by 2-inch) M-3D, made with an Impinj Monza 4 chip and offering an 11.5-meter (37.7-foot) read range.
Mikron is providing its EPC Gen 2 UHF passive RFID tags to ERFID, a Russian systems integrator and RFID solutions provider, for use in jewelry solutions, and is also supplying its M-3D tag for supply chain applications.
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CCC Expands RFID Pilot Projects
Mar. 13, 2013—
Computers & Communication Technology (CCT), a Beirut-based developer of business process management (BPM), enterprise content management (ECM) and 3D-based project-control solutions, is overseeing a variety of pilot projects involving the use of passive and active RFID tags to manage construction sites operated by global construction firm Consolidated Contractors Co. (CCC).
Computers & Communication Technology, a subsidiary of CCC, provides integrated automatic data acquisition software using mobile technologies. The company is currently testing a combination of passive and active RFID tags in an application for managing the movement of CCC’s personnel onto and off of its sites within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while also monitoring the locations of pipe spools—fabricated sections of piping—at an oil and gas construction site in Qatar. In addition, CCC launched a pilot in Oman earlier this year that utilizes passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags to track personnel, and it intends to track thousands of spools at a site in Siberia by this summer. CCT also provides RFID consultancy and systems integration services to other companies.
At each entrance gate to its construction site in Abu Dhabi, CCC installed two RFID readers—one for passive UHF tags attached to vehicles, the other for battery-powered 2.4 GHz tags worn by personnel.
Headquartered in Greece, CCC operates construction sites throughout the world. The company currently has approximately 22 projects underway, including new oil fields, airports, sewage systems and electrical grids. In 2004, the firm began seeking ways in which to increase efficiency, by automating the capture of data regarding the arrivals and departures of personnel onsite, as well as the locations of pipe spools and other materials received (and, in some cases, painted or sanded), and then used on a worksite.
In the UAE, CCC is employing passive EPC Gen 2 UHF RFID tags attached to vehicles, in addition to proprietary active 2.4 GHz RFID tags embedded in personnel badges, in order to monitor who enters and exits CCC’s construction site in Abu Dhabi, according to Khaled Al Shami, CCC’s RFID deployments project manager and CCT’s software development project manager. CCT began by testing passive UHF RFID tags on the badges of personnel passing through an entrance gate, then battery-assisted passive (BAP) tags and finally active tags to track the movements of individuals and goods at a series of sites. CCT, he says, has employed a variety of RFID hardware vendors for the CCC deployments, and continues to experiment. By tracking who comes and goes from the site, the firm is able to reduce the amount of time consumed at entry gates, as well as calculate payroll and ensure that everyone has been evacuated from the site in the event of an emergency. At this point in the project, however, the company is still testing technology to simply ensure that tags can be read as people come and go, and that CCC’s software can store that data.
Every worker at the UAE site wears a badge containing an active RFID tag that transmits a unique ID number linked to that individual’s identity in the back-end software. A total of 500 people are carrying the badges as they arrive and leave through a gate, in both cases riding in an enclosed vehicle. Although the company tested passive and BAP tags, it found that only active tags provided the read reliability required for an individual moving through a portal while in a truck or other vehicle. There are six gates in use—three at the construction site and three at the workers’ camp—each about 15 meters (49 feet) wide. At every gate, CCC installed two RFID readers, powered by a solar panel and featuring 3G communication technology to transmit data to the back-end system. “There are no wires at all,” Al Shami explains. Passive UHF EPC Gen 2 tags are also applied to the exterior of some vehicles, and the gate readers capture each vehicle tag’s ID number, which is linked to information about that vehicle’s operator.
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Taipei Buries Its Manhole Covers
Mar. 15, 2013—
When motorized scooters pass over the streets of Taipei—there are more than four million scooters currently in use within the city—they no longer encounter as many metal manhole covers as they used to. Instead, city workers are replacing metal disks (which pose a potential hazard to scooters, bicycles and cars) with cement slabs buried beneath the road’s surface, and are using radio frequency identification technology to locate those manholes at a later date, when necessary. Approximately 20 percent of Taipei’s manholes have been paved over since the project began in 2009. The goal of the Taiwanese federal government is to replace all metal manhole covers across the entire island with buried versions made of cement, and to include an RFID tag with each cover, to be read when necessary by road or utility workers using handheld readers. Initially, the task is being performed by road-works companies for the city of Taipei, which aims to pave over all of its manholes as part of the national program.
The city of Taipei is replacing metal manhole covers with buried cement slabs.
The project consists of RFID tags designed for the application and provided by EPC Solutions Taiwan, along with handheld readers to be used by road or utility workers. It also includes software, residing on the city’s server, that manages RFID read data and stores each manhole’s GPS coordinates, as well as its tag’s unique ID number, to be viewed by staff members. So far, approximately 35,000 of Taipei’s 175,000 manholes now have buried RFID-enabled covers.
According to the Taiwan Ministry of Transportation Department, the nation has nearly 2.4 million manholes on its public roads, averaging one every 20 meters (65.6 feet) within cities, and one every 40 meters (131 feet) within rural areas. The department’s statistics indicate that in 2008, the quality of the roadway—which can include the slick, uneven surface created by metal manholes—contributed to 17.3 accidents per month. In 2009, Taipei was the first Taiwanese city to launch a system intended to address this problem. The aim is to produce a smooth, even road surface with no exposed metal manhole covers that can create breaks in the asphalt and pose a slippery surface causing tires to slide. To accomplish this goal, the city needed to pave over the manholes. However, when utility workers need to access the holes, they must be able to find them, and that requires RFID technology.
Within a recess atop each slab, workers place a circular cement-encased passive EPC Gen 2 RFID tag.
The city had several requirements. It needed an RFID tag that could be read through the road’s surface, and that would pose no environmental hazard. Moreover, the city rejected the idea of a system that employed RFID readers installed on vehicles to accomplish the reads, and did not want its workers to have to bend over the road to bring the handheld interrogator close enough to read the tags. Therefore, EPC Solutions Taiwan designed an external reader antenna in the form of a wand long enough that workers could plug it into a handheld device and walk over the road without bending over, interrogating any tags embedded beneath the surface.
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