The RFID Center of Excellence Powered by HP, located in Brazil, has developed an automated radio frequency identification portal consisting of a rotating RFID reader integrated with a cloud-based software platform. Hewlett-Packard launched the center in 2005, in partnership with Flextronics Institute of Technology (FIT)—the IT division of HP’s Brazilian product manufacturer, Flextronics—to develop and apply RFID technology for both FIT and HP, as well as commercialize the solutions for other end users in Brazil and throughout the world, specifically for warehousing in any industry (such as aviation, government and health care), as well as manufacturing and logistics.
The reader portal—a freestanding metallic framework containing a rotating arm fitted with a reader antenna—has reduced the amount of time that HP and FIT spent capturing RFID reads of each tagged printer and cartridge passing through it, as well as reducing the incidence of errors related to missed tag reads. The center has also developed cloud-based software that collects, stores and manages read data for management, either onsite or at a remote location, says Armando Lucrécio, FIT’s laboratory manager. The two companies now intend to market the system for use by customers beyond FIT and HP, by the end of this year.
In 2002, Hewlett-Packard began investigating RFID as a technology for use internally, as well as by its partners and customers, according to Rafael Rapp, HP Brazil’s director of operations business analysis. Two years later, at Flextronics’ manufacturing plant in Sorocaba, São Paulo, HP began piloting its first RFID system on Flextronics’ production lines through which HP’s inkjet and LaserJet printers passed on pallets, with as many as 73 to 108 products stacked on a single pallet.
The Flextronics site was an ideal location for this pilot, Rapp says, as HP Brazil manages the complete supply chain in that country, including all manufacturing, packing, distribution and reverse logistics. In other parts of the world, HP’s printers are produced in Asia and bulk-shipped to a particular region.
At that time, Rapp explains, “a cross-functional team was set up in Brazil to manage the project implementation,” and HP launched the Center of Excellence to facilitate that work.
The technology has now been installed to track all HP printers as they move through outbound portals from production lines at Flextronics’ Sorocaba site.
The challenge for HP and FIT was to capture tags’ ID numbers, even when those tags were attached to boxes packed in the center of a pallet. Due to the high density of metal in the products, tag transmissions could be difficult to receive, unless the reader antennas had a very specific orientation that matched the tags’ position on the pallet. Therefore, the pallet had to be adjusted at times, in order to ensure a read of every tag. According to the company, approximately 60 seconds were required to obtain a 100 percent read of a pallet loaded with tagged printers.
The portal that the Center of Excellence developed has an off-the-shelf ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID reader, with its antenna installed on the tip of a rotating arm. When a pallet is placed in the portal, the arm rotates around that pallet, reading tags and then forwarding the collected read data to software that links the ID numbers with details regarding the products and the shipping order being fulfilled. By 2007, with the use of the RFID-enabled rotating arm, the read time had dropped to 37 seconds per pallet. At present, only about 14 seconds is required.
In 2007, the center developed a tunnel reader to capture the ID numbers of 100 percent of the tags placed on boxed printers, as well as on various other items packed with the printers, such as cartridges, instructional CDs and flyers. In 2009, Rapp says, the tunnels were used to read the tags of cartridges packed in numbers of up to 60 per box, destined for sale to customers who required cartridge replacements in their printers. With the new reader portal and tunnel, the center launched a server on which the software could reside.
“We’ve already reached very fast transactions,” Lucrécio states. “Now we’re developing a system that provides an ecosystem that brings all data together.” Since they built the rotating portal and tunnel to work in the cloud, he adds—as opposed to on a local network—the center’s researchers decided the same cloud-based model could be used by others. “The idea is for the software to be available as a service—and not just for big companies, but small companies.”
While large firms with facilities around the world would benefit from managing data from a central location, Lucrécio notes, small businesses gain from utilizing a cloud-based service as well, by requiring a smaller initial investment (such as buying software outright to host locally). A company could then access data stored on the server using the technology, while the firm could also grant access to its own customers or other members of the supply chain, thereby providing greater visibility into the status and location of goods anywhere between the point of manufacture and purchase by a customer.
In addition, the RFID Center of Excellence has developed a smart shelf on which HP printer cartridges loaded in warehouses can be read periodically via RFID readers installed on the shelves. In that way, the company can access data indicating how many cartridges have been manufactured, how many are still in the warehouse and how many have been shipped.
“We understand that the Internet of Things is coming and that RFID will be at the core of it,” Lucrécio says.
HP had begun tagging cartridges in addition to printers by 2009, and now tags 20 million such cartridges annually. All products combined require about 25 million tags yearly, Lucrécio says. However, he adds, the solution, including the rotating arm reader and software, is still at the prototype stage. He expects the center will be able to release the product for sale to other users by the end of this year.
According to Lucrécio, the software is designed to operate with any EPC UHF RFID reader. The company is not using technology provided exclusively by a single vendor, he reports.
The RFID systems installed at Flextronics save time on the manufacturing and packing lines, Rapp says. “The production cycle time was measured before and after RFID implementation,” he explains. “The result of this measurement confirmed that the production cycle time improved.”
Prior to the deployment of RFID technology, Rapp says, some of HP’s inventory consistently appeared in the supply chain, but did not make it onto retail shelves. “Implementing RFID to track assets in real time, HP has improved supply chain visibility and efficiency,” he states, “and is able to deliver all products to customer hands.”
The RFID technology also enables HP to measure product dwell times at the manufacturing site, on the packing line or from DC to store, and also enables first-in, first-out (FIFO) analytics. In addition, Rapp says, the São Paolo site employs RFID in its “reverse distribution” process, enabling HP to track and process returned products, and to thereby improve the efficiency of its in-warranty repair service and return of repaired goods.
“Since the RFID pilot projects are becoming mature and costs have been justified,” Rapp says, research into data management will be the next challenge that the Center of Excellence and HP will face. “Cloud integration architecture will be necessary to support RFID data sharing,” he explains.
The RFID Center of Excellence Powered by HP will present the rotating portal at work at the RFID Journal LIVE! conference and exhibition, being held this week in Orlando, Fla. The demonstration will take place at 1:30 PM on Apr. 9, at the center’s booth (828). The portal is one of this year’s 10 finalists for the Best in Show category of the RFID Journal Awards (see Finalists Unveiled for Eighth Annual RFID Journal Awards).