RFID has been used for many years in automotive,
mainly in closed systems with more focus on active than on
passive tags. During the last 6-7 years, business sectors such
as commercial distribution, retail and aviation have taken
the lead in the usage of low cost passive RFID tag technology
for open systems.
The global automotive industry has recently been catching
up, well aware of the potential for improving traceability,
with an initial focus on using RFID for returnable container
tracking and parts marking.
This had been done at the European level in Odette and in
the RFID working group of the Joint Automotive Industry Forum
(JAIF). The JAIF was created to promote electronic information
standardisation in the automotive industries of Japan, the
U.S., and Europe.
Odette has been actively involved since 2005 in developing
RFID standards for the automotive industry. Much of the initial
input came from the German automotive industry through the
VDA, but the journey has been much longer than we all expected.
We are now close to publishing our European guidelines and
we are also working in parallel on complimentary guidelines
which will be published globally under the JAIF.
Why did it take so much time? We believe the main reasons are:
- The subject is very new for many
people and highly technical, with experts thin on the ground.
- Political issues (the question of EPC or ISO) have created
confusion and much debate in the industry
- ISO standards were found to contain many uncertainties and
getting a common interpretation has not been easy
- Technology has moved on rapidly, but
it has been worth waiting for. We now have more “automotive friendly solutions” available
in the shape of UHF tags with larger memory
RFID for Returnable Transport Items (RTIs)
Work on the Odette recommendation for RFID with RTIs
is soon to be completed and published. This document is based
upon
the VDA 5501 recommendation and widens its applicability across
Europe. The recommendation will focus mainly on the business
processes, but will also describe how data can be stored in the
tag
memory.
To make sure that our recommendation will take into account
all the relevant automotive needs, we recently carried
out a survey to check that the encoding space in the tag
is large
enough to contain the various packaging type coding schemes
that will be in use for at least the next five years. Global RFID for Returnable Transport Items
In parallel with the Odette recommendation we
are working on a set of global guidelines with our colleagues
from AIAG,
JAMA and JAPIA. This focuses more on the technical aspects
of RFID usage.
If the individual members of the automotive
industry anticipate the use of RFID between enterprises in
the future and hope
to build on these logistics systems, it was felt necessary
to adopt general-purpose tags/equipment/software. With that
goal in mind, the group first embraced the international standards
of ISO and IEC, and then developed this general-purpose global
guideline, which allows the automotive industry to co-operate
with other industries.
Because co-operation with existing mission-critical systems
and the database of each enterprise is critical, co-existence
with current systems was a consideration during the project.
It is consistent with industry standards already widely deployed.
This Global Guideline began as an effort to define the data
carrier selection, data structure and storage of data for
returnable transport items. It evolved to address the well-identified
business need in Japan, the U.S., and Europe for memory capacity
beyond a simple 96-bits.
It is hoped that the scope of this guideline will not only
realise international traceability and recycling management
of returnable transport items, but will also facilitate
processes such as customs clearance and promote elimination
of returnable
transport items tax. Meetings in Japan, USA and Europe have taken place and we
are now in the final stages. We hope to publish these guidelines
in April 2009 making it the first global standard for the tracking
and tracing of RTIs with RFID tags.
RFID for downstream Vehicle Distribution
We also have a draft version in English for a recommendation
on usage of RFID for identification of finished vehicles
in the distribution chain, from the manufacturers through
the transporters to the dealers. The original input also
came from the VDA in the shape of the VDA 5520 recommendation.
The solution is based on UHF technology and so called smart
labels (combination of a paper label and RFID tag). The data content has been agreed for quite some time now.
What has delayed publishing is mainly some specific ISO related
issues that would influence our encoding scheme.
RFID for Item Level or Parts Identification
This is the third application area we have been working on.
Also here we have a draft recommendation in English based
on a VDA document (VDA 5510). We hope to publish it later
this year and are just starting discussions at the global
level with our international colleagues about a JAIF version. How new RFID technology can work in the real world and meet
global standards at the same time
Odette Sweden with Volvo Logistics Corporation, Volvo IT and
RFID Constructors set out last year, after an RFID standards
meeting in Japan, to demonstrate that RFID encoding and decoding
schemes can be employed in the automotive supply chain, using
new larger memory capacity passive tags, meeting ISO standards
and using commercially available equipment.
Previously automotive data formats would not fit into low
cost passive ISO 18000-6C UHF tags, due to limited memory space
(96 bits). Recently, the situation has changed totally, following
the introduction of tags with larger memory space (256 bits
or more).
Despite scepticism from certain quarters,
Odette Sweden took the initiative to explore the potential
usage of these new
tags within the automotive industry’s supply chain.
The main idea behind the RFID Demonstrator project was to
show that automotive data content could fit into the new
generation of ISO 18000-6C tags and that printing and reading
of such tags available on the market from several technology
providers, would work with acceptable performance.
The significant contribution of the Demonstrator to RFID implementation
is best summarised as follows:
- It has made ISO RFID standards operational within the
automotive and similar environments (or more precisely in
the whole industry
outside the GS1/EPC community).
- It has verified that guidelines in preparation within
the global automotive industry would be possible to implement
for
parts marking, RTI identification and for vehicle distribution.
- It has filled the gap between ISO standards/automotive
recommendations and closed-loop pilot projects.
At the start of the project In April 2008 there were at least
two different RFID tag chip manufacturers in Europe offering
these new tags; NXP and ST.
The test scenario was a set of data encoding schemes for marking
of both RTIs (Returnable Transport Items) as well as of individual
parts, using RFID technology based on the following ISO/IEC
standards:
- ISO/IEC 18000-6 Describing the RFID tag logical memory
layout
- ISO/IEC 15961 and 15962 Describing RFID tag data encoding
recommendations
- ISO/IEC 15459 Describing unique identification methods
for logistics
The proposal for the Demonstrator project was made on the
following premises:
- It shall be possible to accommodate both Odette
and DUNS data numbering schemes, as well as the LA (Japanese)
scheme.
- The most important data elements are to be stored in
MB01, for performance reasons.
- The content of MB01 must be globally unique, i.e.
it is, according to the ISO/IEC RFID standards rules,
the responsibility
of the organisation programming the RFID tag for
use as an electronic label, to ascertain that the combination
of the
contents in the data fields in MB01, beginning with
the AFI-field, is unique on a global scale.
- It is an advantage if the same data representation/encoding
scheme can be used both for RTIs (Containers) as
well as for Individual Items markings.
- The memory of the RFID tag shall be used as
efficiently as possible. This entails using compaction
where
possible. Since the data in the tag is not user
readable anyway,
it is no extra burden to use compaction/de-compaction.
- Use of already existing standards in this
field shall be maximised.
- Test to be made with tags passing through
a reader field at different speeds with 100%
accuracy.
- That the data could be captured and passed
through to any legacy system.
The system set up comprised of RFID tags, readers, antennas
and suitable software specially developed for the demonstration.
After several months of hard work there was a positive conclusion
and many valuable things were learnt along the way. In brief:
- Unclear sections in related ISO standards were
found that were not always well defined - aspects that must
be solved
in order to make these standards operational. Examples include
entities such as AFI, OID, Relative OID, DSFID, Pre-Cursor,
Bit 15 and Bit 17 in the UII and more.
- Unexpected behaviour in the tags was detected, such
as writing to the tags would have to made in more than
one step
- Much was learned about the exact interface between
tags, readers and ISO standards
- It was possible to demonstrate that the concept of
using real automotive industry data in 240 bits passive
tags really
works.
Fore more information contact: info@odette.org
|
