Category: Industry Insights

When there is a need to increase smart label production volumes, it can be done by adding new machinery, more lanes to existing machinery, or by increasing production speeds. All these methods are in use, and they are combined frequently. For example, new production machines have more lanes and higher lane speeds.

At Voyantic, we are seeing that increasing lane speeds combined with smart label component development has put durability testing into the spotlight. In this article, I analyze the reasons behind the increased interest in smart label durability testing, and I will share the basics of the test methodology.

Why is the interest in durability testing increasing?

I believe that part of the increased interest can be seen as a healthy sign of technology maturation and market growth. RAIN RFID and NFC just work. Technology suppliers do not have to fight with the basic functionality and the focus is shifting to scalability. Outside of some special use cases, durability has been taken as given.

Let’s have a look at the drivers that are now challenging label durability.

Decreasing IC sizes

The latest generation of RAIN tag ICs is becoming smaller. When ICs are getting smaller, a natural question is what happens to the connection between the IC, the antenna, and the liner. And what is the effect on the inlay durability?

The transition from plastic to paper-based labels

Due to ecological aspects, paper is used increasingly as label base material. The “stickiness” of antennas and ICs to paper is different compared to a plastic liner. Paper also stretches and bends differently than PET.

All paper is not just paper, but different additives and fillers are used to create different properties. All these properties, whiteness, polishing, and so on, may affect how the antenna and IC stick to the paper. Finally, add humidity as an environmental variable, and the durability of the paper-based label needs to be studied for sure.

Faster IC attach processes and new bonding epoxies

IC attach machine speeds keep on increasing and the machine vendors are working their way towards 100,000 UPH. The stress to an inlay with a freshly attached IC is higher when lane speeds increase. There is also less time to cure the bonding glues, which has led to new glues being introduced. These new glues require less time to cure, but may need higher curing temperatures. Again, a question about durability comes up: How to fine-tune the bonding process so that the label durability is not compromised?

Faster converting machines

Converting process speeds are also increasing. Higher machine speeds stress the inlays and labels. An obvious worst-case to avoid would be inlays starting to break already during the converting process. Do the inlays survive intact through these fast processes?

Label type NFC tags

Traditionally a label has been one of the major RAIN RFID tag formats. NFC tags have been made more as smart cards, various key fobs, and other more rigid formats. Lately, NFC label production has also started to grow. This extends the label durability question from RAIN RFID to also NFC. Are NFC labels also durable enough to survive through the label life cycle?

All the above changes are happening in parallel. The combined outcome is what matters. Are the inlays durable with all the new materials, components, and processes?

Standard durability test method

Test principles

The basic principle of durability testing is to compare a meaningful parameter before and after a stress, and to analyze the results to determine whether the stress creates unwanted consequences. Because the tags under testing are stressed, potentially to the point of breaking them, the method cannot be used for testing every individual tag. It is rather used to test the designs, and indirectly the manufacturing processes.

For many electronics products, heat cycling is a standard durability test method. Also, drop tests, pressure tests, tumble tests, and shear tests are frequently used. For smart labels, the default test method is bend testing. The need for bend testing comes from the typical smart label failure methods.

The two most likely points to fail in smart labels are chip bonding and the edges of the IC. Bend testing is a way to verify the sufficient durability of both of these possible failure points.

Test method

At the beginning of the test, a baseline performance needs to be measured. The baseline performance of the sample set consists of the threshold sweep result of each of the tags in the sample. The threshold sweeps can be done with Voyantic Tagsurance® devices. The curves describe how much power is needed for waking up the tags at different frequencies.

After the baseline test, stress is applied to the tags, and then the tag performance is tested again.

This cycle of test rounds and stressing the labels are repeated until a targeted performance decrease has been reached. The more test rounds an inlay (label) survives, the better is the durability test result aka durability rating.

The test method document describes the details of the test parameters and stress parameters.

Download the detailed standard test method description

Special tags

There are some special tags where bend testing is not (the only) relevant durability test method. For example, aerospace tags are tested according to the SAE AS5678 standard, which defines environmental conditions such as temperatures, vibration, etc., which the tag must sustain. With these standards, the tag is stressed with vibration and extreme temperatures instead of the typical bend testing, which is designed to highlight the common failure methods of cracked bonding and cracked ICs.

The same test principles can also be combined with other durability testing methods. For example, laundry tags could be tested using ISO15797 standard, which defines how garments are stressed with washing cycles. The idea is the same: to find out whether the tag performance decreases too much when stress is applied.

Also, specialty tags that are intended to be used in extreme conditions, exposed to heat, cold, or chemicals, should be tested in combination with applicable stress methods. IEC60068-2 standards (environmental testing of electronics products) provide help for these. IEC60068-2-2 (dry heat) and IEC60068-2-14 (temperature variation) are likely useful methods, and both can be combined with Tagsurance testing. The IEC60068 family also includes test methods for different mechanical stress types, chemicals, humidity, and so on.

In these special tag durability tests the RFID testing, both baseline and the test after stress, can be made with Tagsurance® systems. Between the RF tests, different stress is applied with the Voyantic Bendurance machine.

How durable is good?

An obvious question related to durability testing is: How durable is durable enough? Or: How durable is good and what is not good enough?

There is no clear answer to these excellent questions. Laundry standard ISO15797 has its criteria and a way to define what is durable enough. SAE AS5678 similarly has its criteria for aerospace tags. But those criteria cannot be extended to other use cases and tag types.

One answer could be: Durable enough is when a smart label survives its intended life cycle. That answer does not help in practice.

Another way is to look at comparison data. It doesn’t give a simple answer but probably helps in practice. If an inlay is as durable as others, most likely it is durable enough. And on the other hand, if an inlay is less durable than a typical inlay, a closer look should be taken, and possibly an improvement is needed.

Comparison data in mind we tested some dry inlays with the following results.

There were significant differences in the dry inlay durability. With the weakest dry inlay model, over 90 % of the inlays broke beyond specified performance with the first test round. The strongest inlays survived more than 10 stress rounds.

• About 20 % of the dry inlays got a durability rating of 1-3
• About 60 % of the dry inlays got a durability rating of 4-9
• And about 20 % of the dry inlays got a durability rating of 10 or higher
• Median durability rate for all the tested dry inlays was 4, and average about 5.5

This suggests that dry inlay durability could be considered typical if the durability rating is between 4 and 9.

Summary

Faster manufacturing machines and new materials have increased the need for testing the durability of RAIN RFID and NFC inlays.

Voyantic Bendurance is a durability test system focusing on bending, the typical failure mechanism of the inlays. Bendurance with its standard test method gives comparable durability data of the inlays.

A similar approach can also be used with other durability testing such as the SAE AS5678 test for aerospace tags, ISO15797 tests for laundry tags and tags integrated into apparel, and IEC60068-2 for durability against extreme temperatures, other types of mechanical stress, chemicals, and so on.

Download the standard test method description

Request a Bendurance demo

Request a durability test system quotation

A few months ago, I started receiving questions about switching to a new IC in inlay manufacturing. All these vendors had done several IC changes over the years, but there was something new going on. The questions were centered around possible shortcuts in the process.

• “What if I just change the IC and don’t change the antenna design at all?”
• “What if I don’t waste time in machine settings and just do it quick n’ dirty?”
• “Are there any ICs that are ‘plug and play’ with other models?”

Unfortunately, I could not offer any help. I did find the question interesting though. At first, I tried to figure out some approaches on my own but did not get past the very basics. That is when I asked help from my colleagues Juho Partanen and Jesse Tuominen, and started doing some research on the topic.

Together with Juho and Jesse we put together a whitepaper that outlines the process and key considerations for switching from one IC to another.

Download the white paper

Key considerations for switching from one IC to another

The IC vendors have plenty of helpful material available:

• IC Datasheets
• Reference antenna designs
• Industrialization guides.

Some of the material is not publicly available, so reaching out to the IC vendor for help is a good starting point.

• Start by verifying the suitability of the IC functionality.
  If you only need 96bit EPC pretty much any IC can do it. But some IC’s have a lot more functionality. More EPC memory, different amounts of user memory, and they support various optional EPC gen2 commands.
• Then focus on production.
  Getting all the details and settings in the IC attachment process adjusted for the new wafer, for the new IC, and possibly for the new bonding paste can take time. This is also a time to check the durability of the new IC attachment.
• When the production compatibility is confirmed, focus on the antenna design.
  Optimizing antenna design is always recommended, and with the IC vendor’s reference designs as a starting point, the design is not that huge of a project. In some cases, it is possible to take small shortcuts, but the time saved is not much. A good and optimized design is a better approach.
• Focus on quality.
  As with designs, shortcuts do not make sense. The best approach is to fully utilize the new IC and optimize the tag performance and quality.

Learn How to Switch from One RAIN RFID IC to Another

Learn more about each step in the process of switching from one IC to another

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For more than a decade, RAIN RFID tag antennas were etched, and the substrate was PET film. Copper was first substituted with aluminum, and various other technologies have emerged, such as printed antennas, and cutting, milling, or laser engraving metal foils.

More recently we have seen antennas being applied on paper and even directly on the packaging and on other surfaces. Much of that development has been driven by cost, but the ecological and sustainability aspects are rising in importance.

Juho Partanen recently moderated an online panel discussion on various aspects and implications of sustainability and eco-friendliness of RAIN RFID tagging. The panelists included Sipi Savolainen from Stora Enso, Jerome Lemay from Decathlon, and Emmanuel Arene from Primo1D. The discussion ranged from ecological tag materials to the technology itself contributing to system-level sustainability through enabling and driving applications for the circular economy.

Watch the panel discussion recording

Before the discussion started, we asked the attendees how they would rate various aspects of eco-friendliness? A quick poll revealed the following:

The initial attendee views support the notion that although moving to renewable and recyclable materials for the tags is a no-brainer in terms of eco-friendliness, there needs to be a more holistic view of the whole system – how the technology enables cradle-to-grave traceability, waste reduction, efficiency improvements, transparency plus other aspects crucial for driving the circular economy and sustainable consumption.

We received a lot of attendee questions during the discussion and since the webinar time was limited, we were not able to address them all during the live session. So we asked our panelists to provide some additional answers for this blog.

Follow-up Q&A from the panel discussion

The responses to the following questions have been written by Mr. Sipi Savolainen from Stora Enso.

Question: If a tag is paper-based, could it be placed in the paper recycling bin, as it includes electronics and metal?
Answer: All paper and cardboard recyclability testing is based on the ability to separate non-fiber-based materials from fiber materials and screen those components before re-pulping. According to the results of PTS RH 021/97 Recyclability of Packaging Products and TAPPI UM 213 Repulpability testing (mod.), ECO tags are recyclable within paper and paper board recycling processes.

Question: According to WEEE regulation, RFID label is still regarded as electrical waste, I doubt if the paper-based label can be recycled as paper?
Answer: Passive tags are considered to fall under the scope of the WEEE directive. However, as tags are being attached to items they are naturally disposed with the material/object they are applied to. The best suited waste management process is defined based on the material/object type.

The response to the following question comes from Jerômé Lemay from Decathlon.

Question: What are the most influential factors that can move world businesses towards practicing environmental sustainability?
Answer: For Decathlon, sustainability is considered in a holistic way and, in addition to preserving nature, also includes taking care of people, and creating sustainable value through governance and business ethics, for example. Environmental sustainability is the third pillar and includes tackling climate change and driving the circular economy.

Environmental sustainability needs to be incorporated into the strategy and values, and forward-looking businesses should see that it is also what their customers are expecting.

The response to the following question comes from Emmanuel ARENE of Primo1D.

Question: Obviously, depending on which material the Primo 1D is embedded it changes its perfromance. Is the antenna re-tuned for each different material?
Answer: Yes, the performance of our embedded system is intimately linked to the permittivity of the tagged item. To make sure the RF performance and durability are optimized for each material, object, and use case, different elements can be tuned: the antenna material and its design, the chipset, and the packaging of our RFID UHF tag as well. Primo1D has all resources in-house to support product development and industrialization process till ramp-up.

Panel Discussion: The Many Faces of Eco-friendly Tagging

Listen to expert panelists from Stora Enso, Primo1D and Decathlon wrap their heads around the eco-aspects of RAIN RFID tagging.

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I work as an engineer at Voyantic and my main fields of expertise are electronics and radio science. Last autumn I started studying business administration to get a wider perspective in general. I have been trying to tie my work and studies together as much as possible, and when I attended a course called “Future experts 2030”, I got the idea to look into the future and see what it might bring for the RFID industry. More specifically: I tried to pick some trends which would have the most impact on the growth of the RFID industry.

Of course, there are a lot of possibilities, but I chose to take a closer look at five megatrends:

• The development of science and technology
• Overconsumption of resources
• The amount of waste increases
• Population growth and the aging of the population
• The development of healthcare

Those megatrends were put on a future radar and some important elements were added for each sector.

The further from the center the elements are, the weaker their effect is in the present time. The colors represent the trend of the elements:

• Green: Strengthening
• Blue: Weakening
• Red: Wild card

Let’s look into these trends and see what they have to do with RFID.

The development of science and technology

RFID technology is developing rapidly all the time, no doubt about that. My colleague Teemu wrote a blog post about the recent RAIN RFID research topics a while ago and listed some interesting topics there. However, if we look at the big picture it is not surprising that other technologies are also developing, and some of those are competing with RFID.

Since RFID enables items (or “things”) to be identified by systems run by computers, it is naturally one of the technologies used by IoT. For example, retail stores can use RFID for automated and real-time inventory. But when we think about identifying an item, is it enough to just know what it is? Wouldn’t it also be nice to know where it came from?

Hospitals can trace people and equipment with RFID tags, and I believe that this kind of traceability would make RFID much more valuable in some cases. That would require that different systems would be able to communicate with each other and pass tag information from one operating environment to another. For example, responsibility is nowadays an important aspect and companies could benefit from more transparent value chains.

Looking from a different perspective, the data consumption in the world keeps increasing exponentially and the data provided by RFID is adding to that. This requires continuously more from the data transfer networks and memory storage. This also brings data management challenges for the RFID systems.

Population growth, aging, and the development of healthcare

In western countries, the population is aging and the lifetime expectancy keeps increasing. The importance of healthcare will also grow while the workforce shortage problem gets worse. Since the amount of work increases, system and service automation should be made effective. This development is fortunately already quite far, as can be seen from another one of Teemu’s blog posts.

More and more medicines are used globally, and online shopping for medicine is also growing. This could attract more counterfeit medicine to the market, and that is something RFID could be used to prevent. Medicine traceability would make it harder for counterfeit medicine to reach the market, which increases the security of the medicine market.

Overconsumption of resources and the amount of waste increases

The overconsumption of resources is a well-known problem around the globe and so is the amount of waste the human population creates. The more we spend, the worse it gets. In the future, soil degradation might prove to be a serious problem for agriculture, and a shortage of raw materials for the electronics or construction industry could be a crippling problem.

For example, in retail, physical waste is created when inventory is not up to date or there are problems in the logistic chain. This causes:

• Items to go out of date (or fashion)
• Too many items are ordered
• Items are lost

RFID is a well-known answer for an automated inventory and the retail industry has adopted it quite nicely.

What is needed from the RFID industry?

To be able to offer reliable solutions for the problems, the RFID industry needs to overcome some obstacles. One well-known bottleneck is the tag manufacturing capacity; the world has not enough capacity to manufacture tags if every retailer suddenly demanded every item to be tagged. We have to pump up the tag manufacturing numbers to be able to answer the growing demand.

Putting up the infra to enable the benefits of RFID is not cheap and requires investment, but I’d like to raise an equally important aspect to overcome. It’s not easy. The end users might not be experts in RF and they do not want to buy the RFID infrastructure. What they want to buy is the automated inventory, which just happens to be enabled by RFID technology. And they need help with that. RFID is not magic and has its limitations that need to be considered. That is why I believe the help provided as a service creates quite much value for the customers and should not be overlooked.

I also believe that it is a problem that different RFID environments do not communicate with each other. It means that the traceability of a tag is cut when it moves from one environment to another. To overcome this issue, the companies could work together and create a standardized system for tracing tag data.

All in all, the RFID industry is in a good position, and seems like the demand for RFID solutions remains high in the future. Hopefully, the COVID-19 pandemic will not cause too much setback for the development of RFID technology due to companies investing less in new systems.

中文版 Chinese version

Three years ago I wrote a blog article about RFID research published in 2017.

Now it feels like a good time to take a look at the research front again.

• Have the research themes changed?
• What are the new hot topics?
• What should be expected for commercial use in the upcoming years?

First, a disclaimer: The selection of the introduced research papers and overview is my own. Summaries of the articles are short and written from my personal perspective. The points I raise are not necessarily the same as the authors’ intentions. When you find the topic interesting, I recommend clicking the link and reading the whole article.

I started the analysis by looking at the headlines of RFID research articles found in Google scholar, published in 2018 – 2020. I did a word count analysis of the headlines. The word count analysis gave me an idea of the research themes. Here is my take on the RFID research.

Wearable tags

A lot is going on around Wearable tags. This seems to indicate that RAIN RFID tags will be embedded in clothing and apparel in increasing numbers. The RFID applications should be designed to take these “out of system” tags to account.

• One research line is to study integrating RFID antennas into clothes. An article titled “Textile-Integrated Stretchable Structures for Wearable Wireless Platforms” describes a brush-painted conductive, stretchable antenna that can be painted on fabric.
• Another approach is based on conductive yarns that can include not only identification technology but also sensing technology. Here is one example: “New Approaches For Augmented UHF RFID Textile Yarn”
• Yet another approach is to integrate tags to various clothing and equipment: “A Dual-ID RFID Tag for Headgear Based on Quasi-Yagi and Dipole Antennas” and “Glove-Integrated Passive UHF RFID Tags—Fabrication, Testing and Applications“
• And naturally, some tags are wearable on their own, such as wristbands: “Design of a Compact PIFA Tag Antenna for Wearable Electronics”

Sensor tags

An ongoing research topic is Sensor Tags. Using RAIN RFID as a means for transmitting information, almost anything can be sensed with RAIN RFID sensors. The trick is to find applications where RAIN RFID brings some unique benefit or a better fit to the application than other data transmission methods.

• Using a RAIN RFID tag’s antenna as a sensing element is a good example. The tag’s antenna reacts to the environment and sensor information is transmitted as a changing backscatter signal strength. This can be used to detect chemicals (“Inkjet‐printed UHF RFID tag based system for salinity and sugar detection” ) and structural/position changes (“A Novel Displacement and Tilt Detection Method Using Passive UHF RFID Technology”).
• Passive RAIN RFID tags harvest the energy needed for sensing and data transmitting from the reader. Passive tags do not need batteries and can be designed to be very small, which is a huge benefit in some applications. “Design of passive UHF RFID sensor on flexible foil for sports balls pressure monitoring”
• The effects of RF-radiation from mobile phones and other devices on humans is a discussion topic on its own. RAIN RFID tags do not transmit actively, but by backscattering the data. The energy levels are in microwatts instead of watts from devices such as mobile phones. This is a benefit when sensor tags are directly on humans: “Adjustable Passive RFID Skin Mounted Sticker”

RFID in health and wellness

Health and wellness is an interesting and growingly versatile research area.

• RAIN RFID can be used in specialized sensing applications used in healthcare. An article titled “Voice Prosthesis Implantable UHF RFID Self-Sensing Tag for Microbial Growth Detection” describes how RFID can be used to detect microbial growth for avoiding more serious consequences.
• RAIN RFID is not limited to sensing and identifying. It can be also used as a means of challenging medical treatment. This article describes the use of RFID in stimulating neural tissue in the brain to help in the recovery of traumatic head injuries: “Split-Ring Resonator Antenna System With Cortical Implant and Head-Worn Parts for Effective Far-Field Implant Communications
• Sometimes RAIN RFID could be a part of a more permanent solution. For example, it can be utilized as a communication method with advanced prostheses: “Constrained Safety-Integrity Performance of Through-the-Arms UHF-RFID Transcutaneous Wireless Communication for the Control of Prostheses”

Printed Antennas, miniaturization, graphene, and specialty tags

Other hot research topics include printed antennas, tag miniaturization and graphene, and specialty tags

• Printed antenna and tag research is another ongoing topic. Research is looking into benefits of various materials such as silver: “Printable Stretchable Silver Ink and Application to Printed RFID Tags for Wearable Electronics”, and graphene: “Screen-Printed Graphite Nanoplate Conductive Ink for Machine Learning Enabled Wireless Radiofrequency-Identification Sensors”
• Tags are getting smaller in general, and this is also seen in research topics: “Miniature Coplanar-Fed Folded Patch for Metal Mountable UHF RFID Tag” and “Passive Enhancement of Read Range of Miniaturized UHF RFID Tags”
• Graphene has been proven to be a suitable material for RAIN RFID tag antennas. Current research seems to be focusing more on applications such as sensing: “Graphene Oxide Dielectric Permittivity at GHz and Its Applications for Wireless Humidity Sensing” and “Sustainable production of highly conductive multilayer graphene ink for wireless connectivity and IoT applications
• An interesting specialty tag goal is to develop “invisible” tags to be integrated into windows: “Exploitation of Transparent Conductive Oxides in the Implementation of a Window-Integrated Wireless Sensor Node”(I admit that invisibility is just how I imagined the transparency)

RFID has a bright future ahead

Overall the research topics indicate increasing maturity in the RAIN RFID and NFC technologies. There is no need to study the basic viability of the technology, profitability, or efficiency of the basic use cases, or common manufacturing methods. Research works at the edges of the technology – and those edges are a good distance away from the everyday RFID and NFC use cases. New research is not needed to prove the RAIN RFID usability in supply chain or asset management in retail, manufacturing, or healthcare. Research is not needed for proving NFC’s suitability to travel tickets, access cards, or as a marketing tool.

Research can focus on “wilder and wilder” sensor integrations, the use of RFID in patient treatments, and other innovative and wonderful ideas out there. Strong research on RFID indicates a strong and healthy long-term future for the technology.

The Future of RAIN RFID Tag Design

Watch this webinar to hear our panel of three industry experts identify and discuss trends and disruptions that will affect the RAIN RFID tag industry, and how tagging implementations will change in the coming five years.

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中文版 Chinese version

I recently gave a presentation at the RAIN Alliance and AIM EngageAgain event about the coexistence of multiple RAIN RFID systems in hospitals. I felt that the topic is important since the use of RAIN RFID is booming in the healthcare industry – including hospitals. Hospitals are unique and challenging environments as there may be several RAIN RFID systems operating in parallel. Each system has its own tags and readers, but they are not isolated from each other.

The coexistence of these systems should be taken into account from the beginning to ensure reliable system operations. The good news is that RAIN RFID technology includes several tools and methods to help with the challenge.

RAIN RFID in hospitals

There are plenty of documented RAIN RFID use cases for hospitals. These can be grouped into several categories:

• Medicine supply chain tracking and inventory management
• Medicine administration tracking
• Patient tracking
• Asset tracking
• Tracking staff members and activities
• Document tracking
• Managing consumables inventory

These applications use several different types of RAIN RFID readers and plenty of RFID tags:

• Handheld readers
• Ceiling mount readers
• Gate readers
• Other fixed readers

• Labels on medication
• Labels on consumables
• Embedded tags on consumables and workwear
• Hard tags on assets
• Labels on documents
• Staff ID cards
• Patient wristbands

There are also tags from other systems such as tags embedded in patients’ clothes.

Why does designing for the coexistence of RAIN RFID systems matter?

When RAIN RFID tags are read or counted, the reader sees all tags in the reading zone by default, even if there are obstacles, such as walls, in between. If the systems are not properly designed, it is easy to read unintended labels.

Example – An application for ensuring that the right patient gets the right medication at the right time: If coexistence is not considered, the system may be overwhelmed with all the tags in the environment: ID cards, tags on consumables, documents, assets, etc. The application fails as a result of the unexpectedly high number of tags.

Methods for enabling coexistence

There are several methods and tools available for enabling coexistence. Some of them can be used together, but not all of them are useful for every application and environment. The decision on which method or tool to use should be made on a case-by-case basis.

• Frequency hopping with its interesting history is a functionality of RAIN RFID readers enabling multiple readers to operate at the same time. These reader features are on by default, just let the readers operate as they are intended.
• Reader zoning is a method where a material blocking RF signals is used to isolate reading areas from each other. This cannot be used always but is worth considering. Read more about Reader Zoning from another blog article.
• Power adjustment and antenna positioning can be used to adjust the readers’ reading areas. Smaller power enables reading from a closer range, and pointing antennas to different direction changes the reading area. These reader settings and antenna positions should always be optimized with fixed readers
• Tag selection and tag quality specification should match the applications’ requirements. A short-range tag cannot be read from far, and a tag with a too long read range may create stray readings. Non-specified or low quality tags lead to inconsistent performance, which creates both missed reads and stray readings.
• RSSI filtering is a method where the reader is set to ignore tags with a response signal that does not match the set criteria. The Response Signal Strength is only an indication of the distance between the tag and the reader, but nevertheless a useful method in some applications.
• Code filtering and using Select is, in my opinion, the most important method and should always be used.

Code filtering and Select

RFID Tag Data Standards follow a structure where the beginning of the code defines which standard is being used, and the following parts define, in more and more detail, information about the tagged item.

For example, the EPC Tag Data Standard and ISO 15961 + ISO15962 Tag Data Standard have about 20 application areas included. The code structure allows filtering tags with codes at multiple levels, such as reading only document tags, reading only patient wristbands, or searching only for a specific tag, such as a staff ID card.

The filtering is done with the Select command in the inventory sequence.

An example – Inventory of medical packages:

• The reader is set to use the select command as a part of the inventory cycle.
• The select is set to consider only items with SGTIN codes and ignore everything else. SGTIN is an EPC Tag Data Standard Code that points to Trade Items – items that are sold and purchased. This would also show other trade items, consumables for example. Usually, this is not an issue, since the application is designed to handle a large number of codes, and items not in inventory are just shown unknown items and can be ignored at a software level.
• Further filtering could be implemented by selecting only items manufactured by specific companies.

An example – Locating a person:

• The reader is set to use the select command as a part of the inventory cycle.
• The select is set to consider only GSRNP codes with a specific serial number, and ignore everything else. GSRNP is an EPC Tag Data Standard Code that points to Service providers, and serial number filters this down to an individual.

Filtering relevant tags with select command is a powerful method and should always be used. Use of filtering is based on using standard coding in all applications.

Watch the full presentation recording:

日本語版 Japanese version

This blog post has been edited after its original publishing. The edits with their justifications are listed at the end of the post.

The COVID-19 pandemic has motivated many companies, including us, to develop and improve different business areas. We started a project studying ARC certified labels, which first required us to get our hands on as many certified labels as possible. We had a plan to source 179 different labels, 50-100 pieces per label, from 16 label manufacturers.

Disclaimer: the pandemic affected the response and wait times for the labels. But even after taking this into consideration, it turned out that sourcing these RFID labels is hard, and requires a significant time investment. In this blog, we take a closer look at how the sourcing process unraveled.

Contacting Suppliers

We started the sourcing process from scratch: searched for the product online and utilized the company websites’ contact information for companies that supply ARC certified labels. This information was easily found, but we didn’t find any possibilities to purchase labels online. As we reached out to the companies, it became clear that we had encountered one of the main obstacles throughout this sourcing process.

About 50% of all the companies did not reply to our initial contact request. None of the companies with a contact form on the company website replied to the original message. In contrast, all companies that had a direct email address to a contact person on their website responded quickly. To reach the 50% that didn’t reply anything, we decided to look for familiar connections that someone at the office knew to get a response and to move forward with the project.

If the first inquiry goes unanswered, I wonder how many potential customers these days simply go with another supplier.

With no previous connections within the industry, we would probably not have been able to get more than half of the labels. Voyantic has been in the industry for over 15 years and we are well networked with tag suppliers. New companies that are interested in starting with RFID technology, however, might not start at all if it is this difficult to get relevant information and samples.

Starting Small Should Be an Option

Small order quantity seemed to be an issue for some companies and required special arrangements and more detailed information. The combination of poor communication and large sample quantities is not very inviting for new companies to start using RFID technology. Increasing awareness and lowering the bar of trying the technology without a significant investment could be crucial for spreading the use of RFID technology.

Customer Research or Interrogation?

We received a lot of questions about our purchase inquiry, e.g., could you share the purpose of your testing, and how will you use the results? Are you sourcing from other companies too? We had limited information to share about the use of the test results at this moment, and this seemed to be the other main issue in this process and, in some cases, even an insurmountable obstacle for purchasing the labels. Sharing this information shouldn’t be a requirement for buying label samples. It is good to gather information on how your customers are using your products to better meet their needs, but not to an extent where it makes the purchasing process slow and difficult or even impossible.

On a Positive Note

Despite the obstacles faced with many companies, some were straightforward to cooperate with and performed exemplary compared to the others. Some companies responded to the sample request the same day, and their samples were received within the following weeks. Some of the requested samples were obsolete, and some had been replaced with new ones, which slowed down the order process for some suppliers as it was very time consuming to agree on sufficient replacement products. However, one company was very helpful when we noticed the label we were looking for wasn’t available anymore. They suggested a comparable label that was shipped within a week.

Highs and Lows of Sample Tag Sourcing

Since we started this project at the beginning of March, we managed to obtain samples from 13 companies by July, but never got the labels from 3 other companies.

Most companies were easy to cooperate with, but in many cases, the sourcing process was extended by additional communications. A good network has been crucial to source the label samples, but also new connections were established, which is always positive.

As a recommendation to tag suppliers, we want to point out that sample orders can be the start of a new, long-lasting customer relationship, which is a good reason to process sample orders with the same importance as regular orders.

Edit on October 22nd 2020. After careful consideration and valuable feedback received from people commenting on the blog, we decided to omit references to specific companies. We feel that it is somewhat unfair to publicly praise some companies at the expense of others based on this sourcing experiment. There may be many reasons why companies have had different reactions to our requests, one of them being that they have recognized Voyantic as not a normal buyer. Finally, we still believe that the topic is important, and our sincere intention is to try to point out something that may be a problem in the industry, not specific companies.

Read more about buying tags from the buyers’s perspective. Download our free RAIN RFID tag buyer’s guide to get a more comprehensive understanding and an example request for a quotation!

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日本語版 Japanese version

Voyantic is mostly working with RFID technology providers. But I still discuss regularly with RAIN RFID users about their projects and challenges they have seen.

• missing reads
• stray reads
• occasional faulty tags or readers
• after a small change something doesn’t work anymore
• and so on

The smaller technical issues often have a root cause in approach to RAIN RFID, especially how it is treated from a continuous improvement point of view. Sometimes (often) RAIN RFID is seen as a one-off IT project. The initial implementation often is an IT project, but when the system is taken into use, the project should not just be signed as complete, but it should be transitioned to the relevant operational organization and under continuous improvement. From this point of RFID has its own particulars.

Already in the implementation project, the continuous use should be taken into account. During the project, it is important to establish the specifications:

• specify the tags including
  • performance
  • quality
  • tagging
• specify the readers

Create a Tag Specification for Your RAIN RFID System

When specifying, use standards such as GS1 TIPP, or other methods to specify the performance. An unfortunately common way is to specify a tag or reader model. With a rapidly developing technology such as RFID, tying systems into specific component models is not the best long term approach.

This specification is the cornerstone of continuous improvement.

Establish Continuous Improvement and Problem-solving Practices

In several discussions, I have shared a version of a below continuous improvement outline. Let’s build the model step by step to see what it means in RAIN RFID use.

Let’s start with the basic: Do, Measure, Improve cycle.

When this is translated into the world of RAIN RFID use, the elements could be described as in below picture. The specification is the cornerstone of the continuous improvement cycle.

Next, let’s add some details:

Operations refers in this case to the RFID related operations. In-house operations related to RAIN RFID are reading the tags and possibly writing the tags, And then depending on the make or buy decisions, items are tagged, and someone is manufacturing the tags. All of these actions should be based on the specification: What are the tag requirements, how the items are tagged, how the tags are read.

When any system is used long enough, something changes. These changes should be reflected as changes in the specifications.

• The changes and problems can be noticed reactively, that is: User notices that something is wrong, for example, missing reads in inventory counting, and reports the issue through proper channels.
• The changes can be recognized proactively: There can be various checkpoints in the process and change implementations. Tagged items can be randomly tested; tags can be tested, new tag suppliers can be evaluated, etc.

If a proactive approach is used, suitable test methods need to be applied. The right approach is to have an in-house RFID test lab.

The same RFID test lab can also be used in problem-solving.

Implementing continuous improvement processes during the RAIN RFID implementation project helps to get the most out of the technology and investment. Transferring the RAIN RFID solution with development practices from project organization to operations ensures successful long term RAIN RFID use.

If you would like to discuss your RFID implementation or learn more about possibilities to set up an RFID lab, please contact Voyantic and request an online demo.