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RFID
Motorola Acquires Symbol
Motorola, best known for its sleek cell phones, has plunked down $3.9 billion or $15 a share to acquire Symbol Technologies, a maker of rugged handheld devices, RFID systems, and wireless network switches and access points. Symbol gives Motorola an inroad to becoming a more valued business IT supplier with accounts in industries such as health care, manufacturing, and retail and access to some 12,000 software partners. Symbol customers include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Wal-Mart, and Walt Disney. The acquisition is scheduled to close by early next year.
Motorola isn't talking about any potential new products to come from the acquisition, but some are calling it a sensible marriage. "With Symbol's expertise in enterprise mobility and Motorola's innovation in consumer-class mobile devices, we could see some really great lightweight products that meet our needs," says Oliver Tsai, director of IT at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, a Toronto hospital that uses Symbol products.
Symbol's technologies will make it easier for Motorola to pitch its products and services straight to IT managers instead of through wireless carriers and service providers, the standard model for getting cell phones and smart phones into businesses. Symbol also sells a wireless intrusion-prevention system, bar code scanners, payment systems, bridges, and adapters that extend wireless connectivity to mobile handhelds.
http://www.industryweek.com
Wal-Mart Adds 500 Stores
Wal-Mart Stores will bring another 500 stores and clubs online with its RFID initiative by the end of this fiscal year, bringing the total number of its retail locations using the technology to more than 1,000. The company has more than 3,900 locations in the United States.
"Recent internal analysis of our ongoing efforts, along with the launch of EPCglobal Generation 2 tags, reinforces the value of this technology for Wal-Mart, our suppliers and ultimately our customers," said Rollin Ford, executive vice president and chief information officer for Wal-Mart. "We're aggressively moving forward with the expansion of RFID-enabled facilities."
Ford noted that all Wal-Mart installations moving forward would only read Gen 2 tags. "We believe this technology, when coupled with new work processes, will deliver even more benefits than we are currently receiving," Ford said. "We are actively engaged in designing some new initiatives that will accelerate our program even further and, in so doing, create even more value for everyone involved. We'll announce those initiatives as we roll them out."
Ford said that Wal-Mart continues to work with its next 300 largest suppliers, which are expected to begin shipping test cases this month. These suppliers will go live with their shipments in January, bringing to more than 600 the number of supplier companies using RFID technology in concert with Wal-Mart.
http://www.prnewswire.com
Army Depot Deploys WhereNet RTLS
Tobyhanna Army Depot has deployed WhereNet's real-time locating system (RTLS) technology to streamline the full-service repair and overhaul of surveillance radar systems at the Pennsylvania facility, marking the first time that a U.S. Army facility has tested RTLS technology. Tobyhanna Army Depot plays a critical role in repairing and overhauling command, control, computer, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems for the Armed Forces. In accordance with the Department of Defense mandate to develop and use automatic identification technology, Tobyhanna is evaluating the WhereNet active RFID system to improve efficiencies, cut costs, and increase quality at the depot.
Benefits are expected to include:
• Enhanced quality control and efficiency as the system monitors the movement of work-in-process assemblies and provides automated confirmation that every radar/antenna system goes through every step in the refurbishment process
• Reduced labor cost through the elimination of manual searches for assemblies, subassemblies, components, and complete antenna systems
• Lower inventory costs through elimination of double ordering of parts that could not be located
• Reduced on-site dwell time, resulting in better throughput and customer service (If a tracked item sits in a work center longer than the allotted time, the system automatically triggers an email alert.)
http://www.wi-fitechnology.com
Anti-Counterfeiting Seen As Key Value Proposition for RFID
In a new white paper, Texas Instruments says the need to protect product and brand integrity is set to become the new value proposition for RFID. With counterfeiting estimated to be a $450 billion industry worldwide, TI's paper proposes a range of increasingly secure methods of using RFID to prevent different types of counterfeiting, using both an off-network and on-network approach to enable "anywhere, anytime” authentication of tag data, thus identifying the product as legitimate. The paper describes examples in the medical, pharmaceutical, electronics, clothing and beauty products markets, where RFID item-level tagging is being used to address illegitimate products and channels.
"RFID has always been about providing consumer convenience, protection and security in applications as diverse as automobiles, toll tags and retail payment,” said Joseph Pearson, business development manager, TI-RFid(TM) Systems, and author of the new white paper. "Now, RFID authentication of individual items can protect both consumers and companies alike against counterfeit goods.”
To download the white paper titled, "Increasing Security in the Supply Chain with Electronic Security Markers,” click on:
http://www.ti.com/
Symbol Launches Mobile Reader
Symbol Technologies has launched a compact, mobile Gen 2 RFID reader that can be integrated with forklifts, pallet jacks, stretch wrappers, and other material handling equipment, and used in various space-constrained environments. By extending the range of RFID beyond the dock door, the RD5000 mobile RFID reader provides customers with improved asset visibility in motion throughout the supply chain, the company says.
The mobile RFID reader also can be mounted on a forklift with the Symbol VC5090 vehicle/fixed mount computer as part of an integrated forklift solution that reduces the need for drivers to spend time recording the receipt and movement of goods. Together, these two pieces can speed product movement through the supply chain and track products, pallets and assets in a variety of locations. "Previous RFID deployment strategies have depended heavily on the predictable movement of goods, with RFID readers installed at 'choke points' such as dock doors," said Anthony Bartolo, vice president and general manager of Symbol's Wireless Infrastructure and RFID Divisions. "By RFID-enabling material handling equipment with Symbol's new RD5000 mobile RFID reader, organizations gain increased visibility to items in the supply chain all the way to the shelf or staging area."
http://www.techweb.com
Jaguar Uses RFID to Track Auto Parts
RFID is being used to speed up and streamline the supply chain for after-market Jaguar automobile parts being shipped from the U.K. to the U.S. Unipart Group, a third-party logistics provider, is testing active RFID tags and sensors affixed to containers carrying the parts from two of Unipart's distribution centers in the U.K. to warehouses in Mahwah, N.J., and Brisbane, Calif. Enabling this solution is Savi Networks' SaviTrak, an RFID-based global container shipment-tracking service. SaviTrak includes RFID tags and interrogators, as well as software that collects, processes and analyzes the RFID data. “Unipart sees RFID as a big, potential service offering they can provide to their customers," says Susan Evans, Savi Networks' director of business development for the European and African regions. "If RFID can take one day out of their lead time from point of origin to point of destination, that is a significant savings," she says.
The Jaguar Tradelane Project will help reduce cycle time by providing Unipart with such information as when containers leave and arrive at various points along the supply chain, as well as any details about the condition of containers, Evans says. Unipart also plans to leverage the technology to enhance the level of its C-TPAT certification.
Unipart plans to tag up to 120 containers as part of the project, which is expected to run for about three months, Evans says. When the trial is completed, Savi Networks will present business-value analysis to Unipart and Jaguar, along with proposals on extending the RFID deployment, she adds.
http://www.rfidjournal.com
Transatlantic Consortium to Research RFID
The U.S. and U.K. have launched a far-reaching defense technology research program that will span military, industry, and academic institutions. Called the International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences, or ITA, the transatlantic consortium will be composed of 25 organizations and led by IBM. It could last up to 10 years and reach a value of $135.8m. The research focus will be on wireless, networking, and security with the aim of understanding the collection, flow, and coordination of distributed data and how it can be leveraged in warfare. The work will be organized into four categories: network theory, systems security, sensor information processing and delivery, and distributed planning and decision making.
IBM researcher Dinesh Verma, who is program manager of the ITA, said the consortium's work with RFID technology will fall into the third category. Three particular areas of RFID will be explored. The first deals with the management and analysis of data generated by RFID. The second will explore how RFID systems can be automated through software. The final segment addresses the complexity of RFID systems.
Verma said that despite the ITA's heavy focus on military applications, it will also aim to produce research of interest to industry. "We have a strong interest in the research being dual use, so it will have military as well as commercial applications." He also said that research produced by the consortium will be published in the public domain.
http://www.rfidupdate.com
Company Benefits From Wireless Route Delivery
NuCO2 Inc., the largest nationwide supplier of bulk carbon dioxide (CO2) products for carbonated beverages to the food service and hospitality industries, says it's reaping serious benefits thanks to a new mobile/wireless route service and delivery solution from Zebra Technologies and Symbol.
Zebra makes a portable and wireless printer for mobile route accounting (among other things). Symbol Technologies makes a whole spectrum of enterprise mobility products, using advanced barcode and RFID technology. "Our route representatives make 20 to 25 stops per day, and the elapsed time between their transactions in the field and data entry into our central information system has been reduced from up to 12 days to just 24 hours. This has increased the speed of problem resolution, while enabling us to improve customer service," said NuCO2's field liaison.
http://www.rfidnews.org
Zebra Acquires Patents
RFID printer company Zebra Technologies got its hands on an extensive number of RFID patents it says will be essential to future products. The portfolio was acquired from BTG plc. for about $10 million. "This portfolio of more than 200 U.S. and foreign patents and patent applications makes Zebra owner of one of the largest collections of RFID patents, including several of the earliest patents related to the technology," stated Philip Gerskovich, Zebra's senior vice president for corporate development.
http://www.rfidnews.org
New Sensor Tags Introduced
Italian startup Montalbano Technology has created a family of RFID tags that log data about the intensity and duration of exposure to modifying environmental factors such as light, temperature and humidity. The semi-passive 13.56 MHz tags are credit-card-sized are compliant with ISO standards and can be read by any standard RFID interrogator.
Daniele Grosso, the general manager at Montalbano Technology in Genoa, says a German company specializing in pharmaceutical labeling will begin testing the temperature-sensing tags, which are market-ready, since its clients-multinational drugmakers-have shown interest in the technology. The tags will allow drugmakers to know the temperature at which drugs were stored at various points in the supply chain. Grosso has declined to release the name of the company but says it offers high-tech labels to the pharmaceuticals market.
Montalbano Technology was created about three years ago, after Montalbano Industria Agroalimentare, a Tuscany supplier of vegetable and fish products, experimented in house with chemical and mechanical devices to control and monitor perishable products. "At some point, they realized that the solution should have been based on microelectronics, so they set up a new technology division and split it from the company," says Grosso.
http://www.rfidjournal.com
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