RFID: The Good News Gets Better

Over the years, I've herded cows, fed cows, milked cows, and, to put it delicately, cleaned up after cows. Consequently, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there's not a lot of love lost between Elsie and me. Still, I found it exciting to learn that Somark Innovations has developed a chipless RFID ink and tested it on cattle to identify and track cows.

The process developed by Somark involves a geometric array of micro-needles and reusable applicator with a one-time-use ink capsule. According to Somark co-founder Mark Pydynowski, it takes 5 to 10 seconds to "stamp or tattoo" an animal, and there is no need to remove the fur. The ink remains in the dermal layer, and a reader can detect it from 4 feet away. As anyone who has had tattooed or attached tags to a cow's ear will tell you, this is good news.

But this wasn't the RFID news that put a smile on my face. No, that news was Honda Italia Industriale's announcement that it is using RFID to transform the production processes at its Atessa, Italy plant to achieve higher levels of efficiency and accuracy in managing motor scooter production. (Did I mention that I'm a motor scooter nut? That, much to my wife's disgust, I currently have three of them in the backyard. I don't know what she is complaining about because it wasn't that long ago there were five of them there, most in various stages of rebuilding and repair.)

In any event, Honda Italia will be implementing IBM's RFID tools for real-time, automatic identification of each scooter along the entire production chain. The RFID tags will also be used on micro-lots of critical components, such as engines. Apparently IBM has been collaborating for a long time with Honda Italia engineers in the design of the new processes and in the identification of the best solution. The RFID technology will be then integrated with Honda's existing IT systems through a Linux and Java (J2EE) application built on the IBM WebSphere Application Server to track inventory and to monitor ways to improve efficiency. (For more on some of what IBM is up to with RFID, listen to this interview with Chris Clauss on Web services and RFID.)

Admittedly, there are those who say that RFID is a bunch of bull, but I'm not one of them -- at least not after this week's news.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:00 AM  Permalink