By installing a radio frequency identification solution at its headquarters and factory, TVS Motor Co. reports that it has reduced the number of security breaches (when an individual enters an unauthorized area, overstays his or her expected visit time, or cannot be located) to nearly zero.
TVS Motor Co. is one of India’s largest manufacturers of motorcycles, scooters, mopeds and other types of two- and three-wheeled vehicles. The company receives more than 100,000 visitors annually—consisting of suppliers, consultants, contractors and service engineers, among others conducting business onsite—at its campus in Hosur, in the Tamil Nadu region. To protect its intellectual property, as well as make the processing of those guests more efficient, the firm installed a personnel-tracking system featuring active RFID tags and readers supplied by Gemini Traze.
TVS Motor’s 250-acre compound in Hosur houses the company’s headquarters and corporate departments, including product development, business planning, supply chain, finance, research and development, manufacturing and IT. Consequently, the quantity and variety of visitors to the site is high, and security concerns are thus critical, in order to prevent even one guest from potentially walking away with the firm’s intellectual property.
Therefore, the company installed an RFID solution last year comprising battery-powered RFID tags in badges, readers at key department entry points, and software that tracks location data. That information is fed to TVS Motor’s visitor-management system, enabling the firm to better manage the movements of these visitors, including their real-time location and movement history.
“We needed a framework to monitor the movement of the visitor from the time he enters the organization to his exit,” says A. Amaran, TVS Motor Co.’s senior manager of IT. Without RFID, he reports, the plant’s visitor-management system had several shortcomings: It was time-consuming to use, requiring its staff to sign visitors into and out of specific locations. Prior to the RFID system’s adoption, guests registered at the security gate, where they were provided with a paper pass indicating their intended destination on the campus. Every pass had to be signed by the inviting employee, which would then be turned in during the exit procedure. Each individual was also given a plastic badge printed with his or her visitor type, such as “Consultant,” “Vendor” or “Supplier.” As guests wandered the facility, they were monitored by security guards at various strategic points throughout the complex.
According to Amaran, this system was time-consuming for visitors, required considerable man-hours for security guards, and was unable to provide a historic record of every area that guest had visited. What’s more, since security was being tracked manually, visitors had to wait to be registered upon entering specific departments, and then wait again in the common area of that department for their host to arrive from his or her office and receive that guest.
The company sought to collect such data analytics as the types of visitors received, the departments they visited and the frequency of visits. By automating that process, Amaran explains, the plant managers had a greater amount of data regarding guests’ movements, while those individuals could also move more quickly throughout the facility.
“Protection of intellectual property has been the [primary] objective of this system,” Amaran states. However, he notes, once the plant had established a team that investigated automated solutions, it became clear that the solution could also reduce wait times and the need for labor.
Over the course of four months, TVS Motor conducted three tests of the RFID system that it developed with hardware provided by Gemini Traze. The company initially tested the hardware to ensure that the tags could be read, then tested the software and finally performed a full pilot of the technology. “The main challenge,” Amaran reports, “was in filtering of continuously recorded reads from the reader and logical interpretation of visitor movement from location to location.”
With the new system in place, visitors receive a plastic credit card-size badge similar to those with which visitors were provided prior to the RFID solution’s installation, says Kasthuri Rangan Seshadri, Gemini Traze’s RFID business solutions manager—but in this case, Gemini Traze’s Traze Active Tag (TAT) tag is embedded in the badge. A paper pass is no longer used. Visitors could then wear the badge attached to their clothing, or place it within a handbag. Guests are instructed to keep their badge with them at all times since they are being tracked by security. The badge’s 866 MHz active RFID tag beacons at preset intervals, and can be read at a range of up to 20 meters (66 feet) in open areas.
Each visitor’s information is also input at the time that he or she arrives, and is linked to the unique ID number being transmitted by that person’s badge.
Data is managed via software developed by TVS Motor’s in-house team, using an SQL database and Microsoft‘s .Net application platform. The location data is then forwarded to the company’s visitor-management system, which displays a visual layout of the compound showing each guest’s current position, as well as whether that person is authorized to visit that area. In addition, once the individual has arrived at the entry gate, and indicated which department and employee he or she intends to visit, the software forwards an advance notice to the receptionist at the department, or to the staff member who invited that guest.
As the visitor moves around the complex, a total of 14 Gemini Traze TAR readers, installed at entry points to specific locations, receive the tag transmissions. All read data is filtered out by the software, with the exception of the tag reads’ first and last entries. The software determines the last read based on a specified amount of time passing with no reads occurring.
Since the system was taken live, Amaran says, guests’ unauthorized movements have been reduced to almost zero. The amount of time that workers spend processing new visitors, meanwhile, has been reduced by 22 percent, and the company has also measured a reduction in unproductive visit time of approximately 8 percent, with a 10 percent decrease in the average length of each visit.