A basic RFID system consists of main two elements an interrogator and a transponder

by asiman (student)

University Degree Mathematical and Computer Sciences

Executive summary

Table of contents

Historical over view

The World War II was the root in discovering the radio frequency identification technology, the concept of the radar used by the big nations participating in the war, was discovered by Sir Robert Alexander Watson-watt a Scottish physicist in 1935, there was a problem in identifying the plans until the Germans radar crew discovered that if the plan changed direction it change the radio signal reflected back.

In the 1960s scientist and academics from around the globe managed in developing radio frequency energy and use it to identify objects remotely, that was good news for organizations, company’s began commercializing the anti theft system that uses radio waves in order to keep track of goods.

The 1970s was the innovative era of he RFIDs, deferent organizations helped in developing the technology, Charles Walton a US entrepreneur patented a passive transponder used to unlock doors without the key he then went to licensed the technology to lock makers and security companies.

In the same decade the US government was also working on RFID technology, the Energy Department asked a national laboratory to develop a tracking system for nuclear material the concept of putting a transponder in a van or a truck and readers at the secure facilities, the antenna at the gate would alert the transponder on the van and then respond with identification codes and other data required by the army.

Scientist from Los Alamos who developed the army project also developed the automated toll payment system, which went commercial in the mid 1980s.

The 1990s IBM patented and developed the ultra-high frequency RFID system that offer longer reader range and faster data transfer, financial difficulties forced the company to sell the patents to Intermec a bar codes system company.

In the 1999 the Auto-ID Centre was established, big organizations such as Uniform Code Council, P&G, EAN and Gillette supplied the funding’s, more and more support in the 2003 from more then 90 large end user companies.

Introduction

The Auto-ID Centre developed two-air interface protocol went under two classes (class 1, class 0) the first protocol was a numbering scheme which has digits to identify the manufacturer, category of the product and single items called the Electronic Product Code (EPC), the second protocol is network architecture to look up data related and associated with the RFID tag ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Introduction

The US department and some of the biggest retailers in the world have plans to use EPC technology in their supply chain, that is the second generation of auto ID technology, which opens the way for broad adoption. In the next section the finding and analysing of the basic technique of RFIDs working technology and what advantage and dis advantage it provide, also focusing on some of the organizations that uses the technology and how it improved their efficiency and quality Bothe from product and service prospective.

WHAT IS RFIDs?

RFIDs definition: radio frequency identification is a system use radio frequency waves to transmit the identity of an object or a person wirelessly in the form of a unique serial number, its designed to capture data on a tag or any other form of RFIDs and transmit it into a computer system that can transform the data into useful information directed for the main purpose of a general or specific organization.

The broad term of automatic identification technology covers the method of collecting data and entering it directly into computerized system without the -interfere of human involvement.

How it works?

A basic RFID system consists of main two elements an interrogator and a transponder there a verity of RFIDs at the moment, but in a simple way of explanation how the system works the interrogator sends out electromagnetic waves with a specific signal the transponder is designed to respond to it.

A simple concept developed from the WW2 radar uses, which is attaching a transponder (it can be as simple as a microchip) with an antenna on an item, then use an interrogator or a device with one or more antennas to capture store and read the data off the microchip using electromagnetics radio waves, the data get passed to a computer system which is programed to use the data to create a business value. That was the first type of RFID tags which is the passive tags, the second type is the active tags which are widely used in the supply and chain of many big retailers and manufacturing organizations

()

Types of RFIDs

The majority of RFID tags or chips usually use a silicon chip to save a special number and some additional information depends on business, in general there are tow types of RFID:

Active RFID system

A tag which have its own transmitting system and usually not always have there own source of power, it can be a battery or some of them could draw energy from the sun using solar cells or other source of energy, the active tags broadcast signals containing information stored on the microchip.

There are two types of active tags, transponder, and beacons.

Active Transponder

Thy work when they receive signal from a reader, the reader sends out a signal that been picked and woken up the transponder, the transponder start broadcasting its unique ID and any additional information, by having the transponder tag broadcasting its signal only when its with in the range of the reader it conserve battery life.

Beacons

There main use in real time location system, the beacons sends signal with a unique identifier at a pre set timing it can send the signal every frequent second like every 3 second for example or once a day depending on how important is the assets, the beacons signal then picked by at least three antennas placed around the location or perimeter of the area were assets been tracked.

Passive RFID system

Unlike the active RFID tags the passive system do not have a transmitter the simply reflect back the radio waves coming from the reader antenna

Who use it and example?

Advantage and disadvantage

Finding and Analysis

Key words:

supply chain management;value of visibility;inventory management;radio-frequency identification;value of information technology

RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology has shown itself to be a promising technology to track movements of goods in a supply chain. As such, it can give unprecedented visibility to the supply chain. Such visibility can save labor cost, improve supply chain coordination, reduce inventory and increase product availability. Industry reports and white papers are now filled with estimates and proclamations of the benefits and quantified values of RFID. Early adopters are now rallying more and more followers. However, most such claims are educated guesses at best and are not substantiated, that is, they are not based on detailed, model-based analysis. This paper argues that there is a huge credibility gap of the value of RFID, and that a void exists in showing how the proclaimed values are arrived at, and how those values can be realized. The paper shows that this credibility gap must be filled with solid model analysis, and therefore presents a great opportunity for the Production and Operations Management (POM) research community. The paper reviews some of the ongoing research efforts that attempt to close the credibility gap, and suggests additional directions for further strengthening the POM's contribution to help industry realize the full potentials of RFID.

Conclusions

RFIDs technology already delivered benefits in many areas, from tracking work in processes up to tracking living species; the speed of the technological development increased the number of companies using the technology’s potential in manufacturing and other areas, as the technology move forward and standardized, it will be used more and more to track goods and identify them in the supply chain, the aim is to improve the business uses of information system, reducing administrative errors, labour cost, that has been common with UPC bar technology or scanning bar codes ,it also helped improving the errors in shipping goods, internal theft and overall inventory level.

Reference