RFID Takes Wing in Aviation

The company plans to test systems at various frequencies to determine how they will perform under different environmental conditions and how best to place tags on parts. Honeywell will ship parts with the tags Boeing and Airbus have asked for, but the company plans to look at other types of RFID technology for other applications, such as the movement of materials and the shipment of containers prior to parts installation, that don’t directly involve Boeing or Airbus.


“First we have to figure out what types of tags we should be using, and then we have to look at compatibility issues,” says Dewey Whittaker, staff engineer at Honeywell AES. “If tags are placed on metal or liquid or in certain places, there could be a problem with signal integrity. Then there are issues where parts might not have the space or size to accommodate tags.

Honeywell AES was using bar codes to collect data related to part histories, inventories, billing and repairs, and sharing this data with Airbus and Boeing when those two customers announced the joint RFID effort. So Honeywell AES is accelerating its plans to switch from bar codes to RFID. In addition to reducing labor costs associated with manual scanning and improving data accuracy, Honeywell AES expects that having real-time data through the RFID system will provide additional benefits. The company will be able to more quickly check on the status of a part and, if needed, make necessary repairs or replace the part.

Intelligent data
Lockheed Martin, a Bethesda, Md.-based company that competes with Boeing on defense contracts, has identified RFID as a “critical” technology, says Ajit Kapoor, director of IT/architecture framework. The company has launched five “pre-implementation” pilots of RFID in its supply chain, including some tests of EPC technology with business partners and customers. These programs will be completed by year-end, at which time Lockheed Martin will determine how to proceed with RFID.

“We’ve been looking to streamline processes, and we knew three years ago that this was going to be a critical technology for the company,” Kapoor says. The need to deploy RFID became even more important for Lockheed Martin after the U.S. Department of Defense issued a mandate that all suppliers put RFID tags on shipments beginning in 2005. Lockheed supplies the DOD not only with aircraft, including the F-16 and F/A-22 fighters, but also airborne defense, communication, missile, radar, submarine warfare, satellite and reconnaissance/surveillance systems.

Lockheed Martin is exploring how it will manage the terabytes of data RFID systems will provide. This data must be processed and analyzed by business intelligence solutions, integrated with back-end ERP systems, linked into customer relationship management systems and delivered as services to all the stakeholders within the company.

Another goal is to take advantage of the fact that RFID provides real-time data. “It now takes a week to find out if something is there or not; sometimes we have no idea where things went,” says Kapoor. He adds that technology as a commodity doesn’t provide a competitive edge, but it’s “using these technologies to deliver reliable, manageable and flexible solutions that will make us a breed apart.”

It’s not exactly a race to be the first to take advantage of RFID systems, but clearly the major players in the airplane manufacturing industry are looking for an edge today while preparing for the widespread use of the technology tomorrow. Boeing is convinced the technology will help transform the company and the rest of the airline manufacturing industry. “We’re laying the foundation now for the factory of the future,” says Boeing’s Porad, “and it will be RFID-enabled.”