The DOD ends the RFID vs. Barcode debate
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Fri, Aug 14, 2009
Last week I was invited to a closed working group session of a U.S. Department of Defense AIT working group at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (for those who don't know the "Patterson," he was Frank Stuart Patterson, son and nephew of the co-founders of National Cash Register, who was killed on June 19, 1918, in the crash of his Airco DH.4 at Wilbur Wright Field.) The projects that they have underway are truly impressive for those who follow RFID. But the most important thing I found at the meeting was that they have officially ended the barcode - RFID debate.
Thirty five years ago the latest technology to automate collecting data was the bar code. At the time it was revolutionary. Instead of a "stubby pencil" and clipboard to write down everything, barcode allowed the DOD to enter data once and every time they needed to record it for ever more it was find the bar code and perform a simple scan. For the next three decades it would rule supreme as an automatic identification technology (AIT). The technology had limitations for sure, but it was a quantum leap forward from the pencil. At the time it was the best technology available but that has finally changed.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was first started in the defence world (note the British spelling) when the UK air force used it to identify friend vs. foe aircraft in the sky. Since then it has evolved to be the latest and greatest AIT. Rather than have to see something to scan it, and use a gun and a human to point at it; RFID allows things to be recorded and collected automatically with no humans and no line of site required. The use case, or applications, and the technology took a little while to emerge but now they have matured to be the next quantum leap forward.
As you might imagine many of the things the Air Force is doing around RFID are classified, but there is one project that I can talk about that proves the dramatic improvement this technology can make. This project clearly shows that RFID has much greater value as an AIT than barcodes ever could.
The team at Wright-Pat led by one of the pioneers in the DOD's RFID world, Mark Reboulet, has RFID enabled refueling tankers or air-to-air refueling planes. The planes they often use are KC-135 tankers that extend a boom out the back in mid-air and let other planes like F-18s hook up and refuel without having to land. In the past the guys who steer the boom out the back of the tanker (know as Boomers) would have to write down the plane being refueled, the amount of fuel it took, the time, location, etc. What the Air Force team decided was that this was a perfect opportunity for RFID. The Air Force has fitted out the end of the booms with RFID readers, the planes being refueled are affixed with unique RFID tags. The process is phenomenal - the plane begins its flight up to the boom and the RFID reader is turned on. When the plane gets about 100 feet away the reader can read the passive tag and record all the unique data from that aircraft. The amount of fuel added to the plane and all other information is recorded automatically allowing the Boomer to focus on his job of safely refueling the fighter.
Reboulet referred to this as one of RFID's "killer apps". His team has shown successful read rates at up to 130 feet away from the boom. Even in the worst of rainy and foggy conditions they are successfully reading at 80' minimum. This type of efficiency and safety improvement would have never been possible without RFID.
Clearly there are other killer apps for RFID that have emerged; from asset tracking, to part marking, to medical device management. Now that the technology has greatly improved and cost decrease over the past year or two the DOD is ready to declare that RFID is truly a superior technology and can have a very disruptive change on old business processes. What killer apps can you think of in your own world?