RFID Gazette

For the most part, many industries such as aerospace fix things when they need fixing (beyond any scheduled maintenance). That's mostly out of a lack of options. However, RFID's use in MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) is growing, and the technology can be used for predictive maintenance. This means that costly, even deadly, maintenance problems can be caught before they happen, simply by allowing easier data collection of maintenance checks and equipment status. Boeing is employing RFID in a similar fashion on their new 787 Dreamliners, each of which will have around 2,000 high-memory passive tags.

Bruce Schneier of Wired News writes about Christopher Soghoian, whose home was visited by the FBI, his door smashed in and his computers and other items seized. Seems Christopher wanted to revisit a known flaw for Northwest Airlines - the ability to create fake boarding passes - by creating a website that lets people create and print their own. A bit extreme, and I'm not sure he got his point across. And here we are worrying about security flaws and cloned e-Passports. Schneier then continues on to explain how fake boarding passes can, unfortunately, be used for nefarious purposes. You'd think that someone would have plugged this problem by now. The printing of boarding passes from home computers has been available since 1999, was apparently halted after 9/11, and then brought back.

Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) will be using Gen2 RFID tags from Intermec to tag baggage. The airport has already had an RFID baggage sorting system since last year - the first airport in the world to do so. The new tags will be used to enhance the system for the fifth busiest airport in the world. [via Businesswire]

A number of other airports and some airlines are already run baggage tagging trials, both to prevent baggage mishandling and loss, as well as airline disasters. HKIA's system will print out flight and baggage information as barcodes. The same data will be encoded into an Gen2 RFID chip.

What has 4,000,000 parts, has temperature conditions ranging from -40 F (Fahrenheit) to +1200 F, is subject to regular vibrations, and costs US$100M? The Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane, which uses 2,000 special high-memory passive tags that run about $15-20 apiece, compared to the typical item-level tags of about forty cents. Boeing is using these tags to help in the documentation and maintanence cycle of each plane in this new line. Despite the four million parts, only 2,000 particularly critical parts are being tagged since they are known to be of "low reliability". This includes expensive items like landing gear and hydraulic pumps. [via Storefront Backtalk]

If you didn't notice the math, that's about $30-40,000 in tags alone. Interestingly, they have found that having that many tags on an airplane does not seem to cause any interference with flight equipment. Obviously a good thing to know. Boeing has previously jointly tested RFID with FedEx on MD-10 Freighter planes.

According to a CCW Research report, China's demand for RFID will be driven by[China Tech News] public security applications. While this may be true, the sheer size of China has resulted in several RFID projects, some of massive scope, and with great potential for more radio frequency programs. Here are a few tidbits about Chinese-related projects:

• China recently announced a gigantic project for 125M contactless train tickets for their railway system - quite possibly the biggest project of it's kind in the world.
• NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips Semiconductors) is finding demand [EET Asia] for it's UCODE EPC G2 UHF chips, which were apparently selected because they conform to Wal-Mart's RFID mandate. Not suprising, given the probably high ratio of Chinese manufacturers amongst the retail giant's suppliers.
• In fact, Chinese-made items make up half of the product sold by giant US retailers. China is also looking to implementing RFID in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors.
• An older article at this site says that manufacturing logistics and suply chain issues are a big driver of RFID implementation in China.
• China has also been tagging livestock and has been testing RF tags for luggage tracking for some airlines.

As you can see, it's not just public security apps driving demand for RFID in China. They have so many projects of such large scope that they had considered having a Chinese RFID standard, though that idea seems to have passed. The government's Ministry of Science and Technology did come up with a Chinese RFID policy white book.

Spychips has an old Shockwave animated video demo of an RFID-enabled airport. [via Storefront Backtalk] (Note: use Internet Explorer; you made need a plug-in.)

What's interesting to note - besides some pretty stupid spelling errors - is that near the end of the video, a man is standing behind our hero with a flat panel device and checking his identity. So concerns about interception of data/ identity from smartcards or e-Passports may not be so far-fetched. In fact, this seems to be a design feature, not a flaw.

Twenty-one years ago last month, Air India flight 182 exploded off the coast of  Ireland. It had been the target of political extremists, who had checked in some baggage but not themselves. Human error allowed the baggage to go through on that flight and another to Narita Airport in Japan, where two baggage handlers were also victims. A family friend was on the first plane, a young woman of only 15. Needless to say, a lot of people felt the impact of that situation, whether or not they were of East Indian origin. To prevent such situations from happening again, RFID technology is being employed at a number of airports to track baggage.

Other solutions have been tried, but my own experience is that they were  sometimes insufficient and/or inefficient. A little over a year after the disaster, I was offered a programming job at a large Canadian airline, on a new software project designed to prevent similar disasters. But the existing software was too convoluted, and there were ridiculous restrictions on coding practices because, as one executive told me, the veteran programmers would not be able to understand newer code.

I only stayed on a year or so at the company, sick of the politics. I know that the software was eventually implemented, but I didn't envy the programmers that worked on the project.

RFID technology, on the other hand, is an ideal and efficient solution for tracking baggage. Current technology applications are so new that the question of coding differences between veteran and new programmers likely does not exist.

In addition to preventing similar disasters, baggage tracking would reduce the cliched loss of baggage that seems so common with airlines.

Because such an application of RFID requires that personal information be stored, it concerns a lot of people, especially those worried about the violation of civil liberties (myself included). However, as with any software-driven technology, numerous safeguards can be implemented that protect the privacy for the average passenger, but leave a way to check unattended baggage, should the situation arise.

It's not the technology itself that is the real threat, but the way it is applied. The real issue is, will those safeguards be implemented?

Finnair claims that the use of IBM's RFID solutions has enabled the Finnair group to bring rapid improvement in the efficiency of its airport operations at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport. IBM is taking the charge of the innovative solution for the allocation of employee tasks at Northport Ltd.  Northport Ltd is the major supplier of ground handling services. It is also a member of the Finnair Group. IBM has agreed to work on a three-year project for the leading operating airlines. Nokia provides wireless technology for the IBM RFID solution.

Jari Viitanen, Vice President Business Development at Northport explains,

Assigning personnel to all the tasks taking place at any given moment is a true challenge. The better information we have on all tasks, the better we can manage our workforce. Especially tough are the last minute changes of arrival schedules, which in turn result in changes in the allocation of tasks. The management needs data when and where staff is available. RFID provides us with this.

Via: [Boarding]

Boeing and FedEx have come together to test active RFID tags on major airplane parts for a FedEx MD-10 Freighter.

Kenneth Porad, RFID program manager for Boeing Commercial Airplanes quoted, 'The RFID technology is designed to help airlines reduce ownership costs by managing repairs and tracking assets'.

He added that the use of active RFID technology is gaining momentum and setting the stage for wireless sensor networks in the future.

IDENTEC SOLUTIONS has produced the active tags. These tags are battery powered and contain a microchip and transmitter, which operate at 915 MHz.

Active tags function more quickly and have the capacity to store more data than passive tags. FedEx machines will read the data of active tags by using a portable data terminal. The company is expecting the RFID technology would improve parts visibility and parts lifecycle visibility.

Via: [Fly Away Simulation]

China is gradually improving in the RFID fronts. It plans to exploit the latest technology steadily. The leading global super power China meanwhile tagged the country's pigs. Now it has adopted RFID technology in the country's air services. 

A delegation from Beijing Capital International Airport divulged that the first RFID luggage Tracking System has been adopted on Cathay Pacific Airway's Beijing-Hong Kong line. It also claimed that the Capital Airport spent more than RMB4 million for the introduction of RFID technology. It excepts to build the RFID Luggage Tracking System in two phases. The work is expected to complete by October this year.

Via: [RFID Blog]