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Mega App Alert...
The U.S. Postal Service is looking to RFID to enable a
very deep and very wide process management system,
which will affect the cost of technology for everyone else,
ever after. -Deb Navas, Editor at Large
The U.S. Postal Service is about to take "a quantum leap above and beyond what
anyone else is doing," said Glenn McDonald from USPS Headquarters in
Washington D.C. Mr. McDonald is talking about using radio frequency identification
(RFID) technology in a quality control mega-application, which, when implemented,
will represent the biggest worldwide RFID installation to date. As manager of the
USPS's RFID Project, he has been developing his continuous flow network
diagnostics system pilot for four years and is now ready to make it public.
"I owe the whole idea to an article I read in ID Systems years ago," he said.
"Somewhere around 1994, I read an article about a bed manufacturer in England
using RFID technology for quality assurance. I saw that the technology had started
to evolve and thought it might be possible to put a tag in an envelope."
"I needed a very specialized tag," he explained. "It had to be small, thin, and
flexible enough to fit into a number 10 envelope and survive letter processing
machinery." The tag also had to be active (that is, contain a battery) to achieve a
robust read range. "The tag might be located anywhere in a large volume of mail. I
needed an active tag that would blow a signal out 8 to 10 feet through layers of
envelopes."
The tag also had to accommodate 26 bytes of read/write memory in order to
encode the five-digit origin ZIP code, five-digit destination ZIP code, mailing date,
and service commitment‹a one- to three-day delivery date. At that time, no RFID tag
on the market met the project's needs, and Mr. McDonald had trouble convincing
RFID vendors to produce a tag that met these specifications‹that is, until he linked
up with a small New York-based company, I.D. Systems.
In November 1995, Mr. McDonald installed 132 RFID readers (supplied by I.D.
Systems) for his pilot project. The readers, capable of performing at a range of 100
feet, were deployed throughout 15 post offices in Washington D.C. and northern
Virginia; seven locations in Houston; and three airports located in northern Virginia,
Houston, and San Francisco.
The idea was to create a continuous, closed network in which the flow of mail
might be tracked and analyzed from receipt in local post offices on through
processing and distribution hubs, to final destination.
Five hundred tags were produced for the proof of concept. They were enclosed in
envelopes as test pieces destined to travel through the instrumented facilities. After
each trip, the tags were reprogrammed and reused.
"Everybody had a standard operating procedure," Mr. McDonald explained. "The
first flow might originate in a little post office collection box in Texas. The system
enabled me to watch the mail arrive and note whether it came into the local post
office on time and left on time. I started to build up a picture of collection activity.
"Next, I could look at the test piece's arrival at the processing and distribution center,
gauging continuous flow.
"I started out looking at the data and generating reports at the end of each day. I
discovered that I could not only look at mail going through the doors but, just as
interesting, see what had been lying around for a while.
"Stuff arriving out of sequence can sometimes get put somewhere -- in what I call
lost-in-the-woodwork areas. Because I can detect tags by multiple readers that can
read 100 feet away, I believe I can triangulate. This will allow proactive problem
intervention."
After the Pilot, What Next?
According to Mr. McDonald, the pilot was a success: "First, it proved that RFID is an
appropriate technology for this kind of application. I've already bought 5000 more
tags and 1100 tag readers. This summer and fall, I'll be going into 15 more
processing facilities, 11 more airports, and 241 more post offices located in ten
representative areas across the country."
Mr. McDonald intends to go nationwide with his RFID-based network flow
diagnostics system, which will require implementing readers at 251 processing and
distribution centers, 63 airport mail centers, and a minimum of 8000 post offices.
"The next generation of tags will be wired into the USPS's nationwide intranet," he
explained. "I'll be able to do local diagnostics in any instrumented post office in the
country from headquarters."
"The proof of concept was a success, and we're ready to move on to the next step:
conducting a competitive procurement for the next generation [of] RFID
technology," Mr. McDonald added. "We want to be sure the USPS gets the best
possible product at the best price, so we're going to compete it.
"The next generation system will involve real-time location on the floor. The
statement will specify a smaller, credit card size product, weighing under 20 grams
[about 0.7 ounce], and the system's signal processing must enable real-time
location on the floor."
"I want to put out the procurement request in early May, and I'm hoping for a
contract award around November," noted Mr. McDonald. "I'm looking to have a
product in hand by the year 2000. We are potentially the world's biggest RFID user.
I want to put the same technology into everyone's hands at the same time.
"What I really want is a continuous flow wide area early warning system. My whole
goal in life is to get the Postal Service out of bar coding and into RF in terms of
distribution activities and container level tracking."
Deb Navas is editor at large for ID Systems magazine, with some 100 articles
published in technical magazines internationally. |
