Finding ROI IN RFID

The number one issue holding back RFID deployment is the misconception that RFID cost too much and they never return value. RFID-enabled supply chains and the companies’ needs to understand how RFID changes the decision-making and supply chain dynamics.

RFID is sold to most companies under the assumption of anticipated savings on labor, operation efficiency improvements, and shrinking inventory levels. Well are these good items to base your ROI on? NO they are not, if your processes are that broken that a simple deployment of a tool like RFID can return $50,000 to $500,000 in savings then you could save more money just fixing them first place and use RFID for much more important and harder to solve problems.

RFID will return much larger benefits in decision making, line balancing, customer satisfaction, quality, and So Much Mor. .Ask for our White paper on the True ROI of RFID.

Byron

Help, My RTLS deployment does not work?

Yes the core capability of the RTLS solutions is its ability to be adjustable and compliant to match any deployment environment you require. Flexibility is something that is lacking in the RFID market but brings with it some caveats. RFID for the most part is very easy to set up; you place a reader where you intend to read the tagged asset and you have it. When you get into RTLS and beacon/locator/reference tag location, you have a lot more power and environmental options that must be controlled and understood.

Training is crucial in these products as just out of the box deployments do not work. Please let me know when you are available and I’ll set up a webinar session to go over the product with your team and show you how to set it up properly for your testing.

Get the training and you will be successful and happy. Picking the easy low hanging fruit leaves the really good product untouched.

Byron Blackburn

RFID Automation Cures the Number 1 Supply Chain Problem

An interesting Independent study was just released. Comprised form logistics blogs with a focus on logistics core problems and the believed cause. Covering over nine months of posts this study tracked reasons, problems, and suggested resolutions grouping them in the top ten areas of concern. One glaring result was three of the top 5 directly related to human error. These three apprised over 50% of the core problem as well.

In truth the human equation seems to rebound as unreliable again and again. As logistic consultants we get called in so many times to bring in RFID or other automation when process control is really all that is required. Employee involvement, lack of management commitment, poor processes, and a lack of understanding of what those processes are just compounds the issue. Before we do any automation we demand that we value stream map their process to make sure we understand what their actual process is. In most cases it is not close to what they think it is or what they have documented. Management and employee circumvention is everywhere and training is lacking as well.

It appears the old practice of just sticking a warm body in a position with the hopes of training getting done or acquired on the job, and the hope they can follow the documented instructions is the norm. Problem is the instructions are written in most cases by someone who has limited experience to the actual work being done, and the employee follows what makes sense to them. We can fix these problems and if necessary put in the automation (RFID/GPS/Bar-Code/ETC.) but it takes time and commitment on behalf of the customer. There is no magic Technology that fixes these problems but business keeps trying. End result is you have too many stand-alone systems that do not communicate with each other with conflicting processes that only compound the problem. It can all be mapped and blended together but there is no quick fix. Remember the longer you try to only grasp the tired expression of “Low hanging fruit” the longer you add to the problem. All the really good fruit goes to waste because you don’t want to spend the effort or the money to buy the ladders and climb them.

RFID and RTLS is the tool that controls processes and send the information to where you need it letting you know what is going on and avoiding problems before they stop production.

Thank you So much Byron Blackburn.

RTLS Made Simple Has Moved

RTLS Made Simple will now be hosted by our Friends at RFind Inc. for the Time being the direct link will be:

http://rfind.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=38&Itemid=215

You May have to Copy this link and Paste this in you browser.

Shortly all traffic to http://www.rtlsmadesimple.com/ will be redirected.

Thanks for your support.

Byron Blackburn

Looking at the End od 2010! Hello 2011

Just a few days left in 2010. Most of us have all been busy trying to get that last project in the can to wrap up the year. I try and pull that work forward into the September, November time frame so I can concentrate on my next year plans, review trends for the coming year, align with the best of bread tools and position our efforts into markets that are heating up.

A lunch date here and a phone call there and I keep my finger on the pulse of what the market is doing and draft my plans accordingly. Here are my Top Five markets that effect Logistics and RFID tools for automated location for the coming year:

1) From a manufacturing stand point:

a) The Auto Industry is back!

i) Just maybe not as strong as the North American (US) Work force would like to see. We see a big upswing in investment in overseas facilities and projects. New competition entering the market from China and India following the success the Korean Cars have experienced here in the US this is a business plan to follow. GM and Chrysler are leaning heavily on none US based product and are now bringing to market Cars that are really world class in function not just words. Ford has done a wonderful job of rebuilding their product line and business model by starting at (can I use an over worked phrase) Job 1; Build a car people want to buy and drive - what a concept?

b) Heavy manufacturing:

i) Wow with commodity prices hitting records every few days this was an easy guess! The people that make the large Mining Equipment like Caterpillar, Komatsu, John Deere, and Volvo just to name a few, have a sellers’ market to feed right now. Massive cuts in 2009 have left them a bit short handed but built up the cash reserves. Now they just have to learn how to do more with less, and automate some processes to Value Stream operations. Setting on cash will let them buy up market share, they just need to make sure and save some of that cash for core improvements.

2) Agriculture is a coming market:

a) The bread Basket of the United States has changed over the years and we now have technology breaking out all over from GPS guided equipment to soil sampling at application time to adjust fertilizer to the actual soil requirements as you drive. Saving money on over application and reducing over use reduces fuel cost as well. Cost of Chemicals and the resulting theft of them is becoming a problem as well. The World Ag market is right there with the US and the growing needs of the world are demanding more.

3) Health Care:

a) Well the world population worldwide still grows and here in the US the Baby Boomers are all aging nicely. Regulation and health care cost have continued to rise at an alarming rate. All this has forced cutbacks, staff overloading and increasing patient base stressing this system.

4) Education:

a) This and Market Five are closely tied. Here in the United States we worry about or children in school and their safety but these pale in comparison to what some children experience around the world. School Lunch programs, medical response, resource scheduling, and testing all are becoming hard to control and trace.

5) Public Security and safety:

a) Public transportation has never been largely used in the United Sates as much as it has been deployed around the world. Large metropolitan areas in the US have some busses, trains, and subways but once you leave the city we depend on the automobile for our transportation needs. We are seeing move people moving to public transportation to save cost in the US, and Air Travel is growing quickly as well.

b) This is not repeated for the most part worldwide as public transportation is a core part of the daily life.

c) With massive amounts of people relying on or moving to public transportation, accidents, weather issues, and just the uneasy state of the world today is stressing the system to find new answers to Support and service of this vitally depended on system.

What does all of this have to do with RFIND? Opportunity, the use of RFID tools to track and trace Equipment, services, People, and Items to save time, money, and increase efficiencies. RFID is the tool of choice for streamlining systems and processes without manual input. Deployed properly it will return its total investment in well under a year and pay off additional dividends for years to come adding to you bottom line and operations.

Check with your RFID Consultant today for how these tools can help you in 2011.

RFID not just for Location any longer.

Over the years my efforts in Kanban, Six Sigma, value Stream mapping and Process control mixed with automated technology improvements where they fit and add value return Accuracy and Efficiency has giving me some insight as to what RFID can really do.

With defined processes and recording control of process flow will give you an accurate view of produced products and consumed material. And RFID / RTLS work wonders in these environments.

It also gives you a window as to what is being delivered to the customer with a verifiable production history for Customer follow up, satisfaction, and quality control.

Also you now have a window to your inbound supply chain that allows you to foresee delivery problems and adjust production and start on line to address issues before they become a problem, maximizing production uptime and production flow.

These attributes give in many cases almost instant ROI. But I am starting to see the real value of this wonderful tool. I will coin the phrase here and I am sure you will see it in the future RFED, the acronym for Radio Frequency Event Detection.

Laying out a production facility for manufacturing, parts storage and delivery, line side delivery, machine line control and much more require miles of Can Bus and serial wiring back to the control systems Logic unit, PLC’s and computers.

Take this Machining Center retro-fit and rebuild. An 11 station machining center all connected by delivery conveyers, tracked pallets, automated fixtures and clamping systems. This large system covered close to a football field size footprint (Roughly 150 meters by 75 meters). In this system was 35 Pallets/fixtures, and over 300 meters of conveyers and tracks. With hundreds of presence detection switches, door switches, access control switches, movement switching, and more. The close to one mile of wiring with multi channels required was a cost constraint to the project budget and the time to complete was a problem as well as the systems if a mission critical system to production.

Here Comes RFED! Working with a select RFID Vendor we made some minor changes to their product and monitor all the above mentioned devices and relay all that information back to the correct control unit without wires. Saving close to $250,000 US dollars in labor and wiring, and trimming six weeks out of the deployment time, makes this deploy and instant ROI and add millions of dollars to the bottom line in lost time along.

RFID / RTLS and now RFED,

Let me know when you need that Next Technology Solution. It just may be available today if you just think outside the box. Byron

WiFi RTLS and your Business will it work for you?

Just another day in the office, and the same question came up in a conference call today. What do I have to put in place to get my business ready for RTLS deployments?

This is a hospital style environment that again is trying to stretch their WiFi network deployment dollars to include RTLS. The allure here to use existing infrastructure to support location tools is a noble one, and has valid cost advantages, but in retrospect this is not always the end result. Additional WiFi infrastructure is in most cases required, and if not that, additional location beacons or devices need to be used in tuff to locate areas.

This is not to say WiFi does not work, or that it is not a great cost effective tool. We base WiFi location systems value off of the extensive research and customer statements that point out the overall success rate of total WiFi RTLS / Location solutions is much lower than the WiFi industry vendors would like us to believe. Yes I have used WiFi, and deployed it in these environments but our customers know going in that we are using the technology for this because: XYZ, and if requirements increase or areas are troublesome then: ABC will have to be installed or added on.

WiFi has been around a long time in the RFID world, it is a technology designed for communication that has been asked to be a location system as well because, well in theory it can. ZigBee fits this description as well, and some other technologies but that is the core of the issue. I used a framing hammer the other day to put up trim in the bathroom, not because it was the right tool but it was what I had and I was too lazy to drive from the office back home for the correct tool. Bottom Line the trim is up but it has a few more marks in it then it needed, and it took and light hand with hammer and longer to do. In the end the results are poor compared to if I would have used the correct tool.

Let’s not forget the reason the location tools are needed. If you ask the customer what they want it for you receive some varying answers, and in many cases receive vague answers. Customers have the concept but not solid answers as to how they want to use it. This is where the vendor must do a good analysis of the process stream and flow, mapping this out as to where the value of the location information can be used and how. Without this data being placed in a good software tool you have a limited value prop for you deployment. Given most RFID hardware vendors have software that works with their hardware only you have another problem. Proper Software platforms must be able to handle any tool you throw at it. Take our hospital we discussed today, they will have pharmacies sending items with bar-codes, or passive RFID tags. WiFi tags may work in some departments but not secure enough for tight control of secure floors or restricted patients environments. Will all of this fit into the system that controls your location system? In almost every case the answer to this is no.

Bottom line here again; do site analysis of the processes first, find out what they need to track and how that information needs to be handled and presented, select the software that fits these requirements, then you can look at the location technology that fits the requirements of the covered areas.

With these simple few step processes you will have a complete synchronous flowing system that goes in quickly and performs from day one with limited retuning and adjustments. As well this is reducing required upgrades and retrofits later on in the use of the system. Byron