ISO

ISO



ISO

The first use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was documented in the 1940's by the British Royal Air Force to identify aircraft in World War II and was part of the refinement of radar. During the 1960's RFID was first considered as a tracking solution in the commercial world. The first applications involving RFID were developed over the next twenty years. These commercial applications were concerned with identifying an item inside a single location.

The latest attempt to commercialize the use of RFID started in 1998, when researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Auto-ID Center began to research new ways to track and identify objects as they moved between physical locations. This research centered on radio frequency technology and how information that is held on tags can be effectively scanned and shared in real time.

Mechanics Of RFID

The basic principle of RFID is identifying an object using a radio frequency transmission. The technology can be used to identify, track, sort or detect a wide variety of objects. Communication takes place between a reader or interrogator and a transponder or tag. Tags can either be active, which means it is powered by battery, or passive, which is powered by the reader field. The communication frequencies used depends to a large extent on the application, and range from 125KHz to 2.45 GHz. Regulations are imposed by most countries to control emissions and prevent interference with other industrial, scientific or medical equipment.

In a typical system tags are attached to objects. Each tag has some internal memory which it stores information about the object, such as its unique ID number, or details including date of manufacture and item information. When a tag passes through a field generated by a reader, it transmits this information back which identifies the object. Until recently the focus of RFID technology was mainly on tags and readers, which were being used in systems where relatively low volumes of data are involved. This is now changing as RFID in the supply chain is expected to generate huge volumes of data, which will have to be filtered and routed to ERP or Warehouse Management systems.

A new RFID standard has been announced by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The new standard is ISO 17367:2009 defines the basic features of RFID use in the supply chain, when applied to product tagging. This will help manufacturers and distributors to better track products and to securely manage traceability with RFID tags.

ISO 17367:2009 makes specific recommendations with regards to encoded identification of the product; additional information about the product on the RF tag; semantics and data syntax to be used; data protocol to be used to interface with business applications and the RFID system; air interface standards between the reader and RF tag.

ISO 17367:2009 defines the basic features of RFID for the use in the supply chain when applied to product tagging. In particular it

provides specific recommendations about the encoded identification of the product,

makes recommendations about additional information about the product ...