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We all know about the Wal-Mart directive regarding the use of RFID tags for merchandise inventory. The nationwide big-box retailer has required the use of these identification tags by its suppliers. Some printers have developed the skills and technologies to create them; others took a look at the complexities of RFID and backed away. However, RFID tags can serve printers in other ways—as a fast and reliable way of tracking paper reels.
RFID stands for "radio frequency identification." The tags incorporate integrated circuits, or chips, and tiny antennae to transmit basic identification, like serial numbers, and additional data to a separate receiver or reader. Stick an RFID tag on the side of a carton or, in this case, on a paper reel, and the package can be tracked during shipping and receiving, and located in the warehouse.
However, if the RFID is attached to the wrapper, when the wrapper is removed, the tag goes with it. Any unused paper left on the reel may go unidentified as to its exact weight and color and might be stored forever in the warehouse. In another scenario, with the RFID tag on the wrapper, if a reel proves to be defective—for instance if the web breaks in the middle of a print run—printers may have no means to prove to the supplier when it was purchased in order to claim a refund.
One solution is to put the RFID tag on the reel core. However, until recently, this has been ineffective. A "passive" RFID tag on a reel core can't generate a signal strong enough to be read, and though "active" RFID tags transmit stronger signals, active tags are too expensive to be practical in this application.
Three Kinds of RFID
RFID tags come in three flavors: Active, Passive, and Semi-Passive. Active tags include their own small power source, a battery, to power up the chip to transmit a signal to a reader either continuously or at intervals. Passive RFID tags draw their operating power from the reader. An Israeli company, PowerID (www.power-id.com), has developed the PowerR tag for PowerReel, a semi-passive RFID tag, or battery-assisted passive (BAP) tag that transmits signals in the high-frequency range of 850 to 960 MHz. The cost is equivalent to a high-end passive tag.
"With our BAP technology, about 90 percent of the reader energy is reflected, or back-scattered, back to the reader," says Elan Freedberg, marketing director at PowerID. "With passive tags, only about 50 percent of the energy is reflected back. So the big problem with passive is you either don't gather enough energy to wake up the chip, in which case the tag cannot be read, or you've powered up the chip, but you don't have enough energy to reach the reader, in which case again, the label is not read.
"The PowerR tag has a battery that is thin and flexible, less than a millimeter thick," Mr. Freedberg says. "What it does is eliminate the need to power up from the energy of the reader. You can get much better performance not depending on gathering energy from reader and can keep the label's chip switched on."
The new PowerR tags can be read at distances of about 10 meters away and within a full 360-degree range around the reel. And, because they transmit a stronger signal, PowerR RFID tags are applied to a straw board reel core, and the tag remains with the core throughout its lifetime, so that even half-rolls can be identified and tracked as they move from the mill to the printer, and in and out of the warehouse.
In Operation
PowerR RFID tags were introduced about 18 months ago and have been used primarily in Europe. With Yedioth Information Technologies, part of Israeli media company Yedioth Group, PowerID has developed the PaperVue system, which combines the new RFID hardware with software that collects and indexes data gathered from the tags and generates reports. In addition, PowerID has worked with Holmen Paper, a Swedish firm that sells into the United States, and with a U.K. printer that is one of Holmen's customers.
"Holmen has sent 1,000 reels that have been tagged with our PowerR tag to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Israeli's largest daily," he notes. "Yedioth has actually asked three or four of its suppliers to start tagging. So we have early-adopter type of companies that have been tagging for a few years, and others just getting started."
Through testing and in actual use, the PowerR tags have a proven read-rate of 99.9 percent. They can be read by handheld readers or, more quickly and easily, by readers mounted on the frame of a shipping dock. Most significantly, the PowerR tags can effectively track paper reels through the whole supply chain. Printers will know exactly what paper they have on hand, even on open reels, and will be able to better manage paper inventory.
PowerR and PaperVue products are available in the United States through PowerID Ltd., Brookfield, Wis.
Contact Jeanette Clinkunbroomer, a freelance writer, at jclink@aol.com.
author: By Jeanette Clinkunbroomer