Cisco Testing, Deploying RFID on Multiple Fronts

Cisco has tagged assets and prototypes, and installed RFID reader infrastructures, at six of its labs to date, with plans to roll out the technology to other labs as well. According to Sheikh, the firm believes the system can help it lower capital expenditures by more than $10 million per year.

Reverse Logistics and Product Repair
Additionally, Cisco is looking to utilize RFID to improve the speed of its returned material authorization process. During this process, the firm works with its contract manufacturers to determine why a particular piece of equipment has failed, and to also determine whether it is linked to a larger manufacturing issue that could lead to additional failures.

Cisco's end customers need to be up and running 100 percent of the time, Sheikh says. "When you pick up a phone, you need to hear a dial tone." So when a piece of equipment does fail, Cisco works with its supply chain partners to quickly replace it, and then to determine the cause of the failure. They accomplish this by first having the broken gear shipped to a Cisco customer service center. From there, it might be sent back to the contract manufacturer that built it. Cisco engineers will also work to determine the problem.

The process can take more than two months, and Cisco is now testing RFID as a means of tracking the items' location as they move from one facility to another for repair. This should not only shorten repair cycle times, but also enable Cisco to provide up-to-date repair status information to its customers, based on where their returned items are located in the repair process.

According to Sheikh, Cisco has identified an end user and a contract manufacturer willing to participate in a pilot to test this application. At present, he says, the project is in its planning stages but should up and running by early January 2009.