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Cardinal Health Deploying Drug E-Pedigree System
Pfizer and other drug manufacturers are presently using HF tags (see Pfizer Using RFID to Fight Fake Viagra and Pfizer Prepares for Viagra E-Pedigree Trial). In Cardinal Health's RFID tests, however, HF tags achieved read rates of only 60 to 80 percent (depending on the type of HF tag) on conveyors moving at 60 feet per minute, Kuhn says. The read rates for those tags dropped considerably when tested on conveyors moving at 120 feet per second.
The results are a clear indication to Cardinal Health that HF RFID is not currently ideal for high-volume distribution centers. "We are designing both HF and UHF into our processes," Kuhn says, "but through the testing that we've done, and our pilot activities, we've clearly demonstrated that HF is not going to work. While HF may work well in a manufacturing application, it does not work well in a high-volume distribution environment like ours."
To work around the low read rates—and there must be a work-around because to fully document a shipment using RFID, 100 percent of all items must be identified—Cardinal Health is creating an exception-handling line to divert cases containing item tags not successfully read to an area where those items can be manually accounted for.
Slowing down the conveyors to boost HF read rates is not an option, according to Kuhn, who says: "We can't slow the lines down; we have to get our orders out."
One possibility might be the use of inference, which would allow Cardinal Health to accept a trusted manufacturer's shipping notices listing the items in each case, and to presuppose, for example, that a case expected to contain 72 items does indeed contain that quantity, even if not all items' tags were read during that case's interrogation. "What we'd like to do is be allowed to assume that we know what those missing units are, based on electronic communication from the trusted partner," Kuhn says. "If the manufacturer has said we were supposed to receive 72 and we only read 68, can we assume that all 72 are in the case?"
The California legislation neither prohibits nor condones inference, so Cardinal Health is asking the industry to work together to determine whether or not inference can work. The company would also like to see the pharmaceutical supply chain industry settle on a standards-based way to document the drug's movement in the supply chain, using a single tag frequency and air-interface protocol.
Still, the company is realistic. "I don't know if we will ever see a unified approach, because everyone is trying to optimize the technology for their environment," says Kuhn. "The challenge I lay out is for the [RFID] vendor community to find a way for both of these technologies—HF and UHF—to coexist, and to coexist effectively."
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The results are a clear indication to Cardinal Health that HF RFID is not currently ideal for high-volume distribution centers. "We are designing both HF and UHF into our processes," Kuhn says, "but through the testing that we've done, and our pilot activities, we've clearly demonstrated that HF is not going to work. While HF may work well in a manufacturing application, it does not work well in a high-volume distribution environment like ours."
To work around the low read rates—and there must be a work-around because to fully document a shipment using RFID, 100 percent of all items must be identified—Cardinal Health is creating an exception-handling line to divert cases containing item tags not successfully read to an area where those items can be manually accounted for.
Slowing down the conveyors to boost HF read rates is not an option, according to Kuhn, who says: "We can't slow the lines down; we have to get our orders out."
One possibility might be the use of inference, which would allow Cardinal Health to accept a trusted manufacturer's shipping notices listing the items in each case, and to presuppose, for example, that a case expected to contain 72 items does indeed contain that quantity, even if not all items' tags were read during that case's interrogation. "What we'd like to do is be allowed to assume that we know what those missing units are, based on electronic communication from the trusted partner," Kuhn says. "If the manufacturer has said we were supposed to receive 72 and we only read 68, can we assume that all 72 are in the case?"
The California legislation neither prohibits nor condones inference, so Cardinal Health is asking the industry to work together to determine whether or not inference can work. The company would also like to see the pharmaceutical supply chain industry settle on a standards-based way to document the drug's movement in the supply chain, using a single tag frequency and air-interface protocol.
Still, the company is realistic. "I don't know if we will ever see a unified approach, because everyone is trying to optimize the technology for their environment," says Kuhn. "The challenge I lay out is for the [RFID] vendor community to find a way for both of these technologies—HF and UHF—to coexist, and to coexist effectively."
