We talked with Bob Mills, General Manager of Kirk Rudy, at RFID Journal Live! 2013. Kirk Rudy was founded in 1967 and specializes in encoding and verification systems as well as feeders, transports and conveyors for the printing and packaging industries.

The company demonstrated their high-speed hang tag encoding system which is powered by the Impinj STP 2.0 source tagging platform. Using hang tags provided by FineLine Technologies with SMARTRAC inlays powered by Impinj Monza 5 chips, the machine runs at an impressive 600 feet per minute and is able to encode up to 75,000 Monza-based tags per hour.

Please contact us if you are interested in learning more about this system.

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How does it work? RFID cards given to guests contain a unique ID number that links to information stored in a database. When a visitor comes in range of an RFID reader, the information is retrieved triggering personalized greetings, messages and videos.  Keep reading for some cool examples of companies succeeding with this concept.

RFID Wows Guests with Personalized Videos, Messages

At the New York City Marathon, ASICS took advantage of ChronoTrack’s RFID timing infrastructure and used the technology to display personal messages to runners.  Several months before the race, friends and family members could submit encouraging videos to the ASICS Support Your Marathoner service. Messages are linked to each runner and the unique ID contained in the RFID tag.  As runners pass certain points along the course, RFID readers register their tag and their personal video is displayed on a 20-foot LED screen.

The Apollo Agency, a Montreal event management firm, is using RFID to spice things up at functions and parties.  At one event featuring a local band, guests were personally greeted by the lead singer. Prior to the event, guests registered online and included information such as preferred language.  Upon arrival, each person was given an RFID card linked to their registration details in the back-end system.  The band’s lead singer prerecorded messages greeting party guests by name in either French or English. Attendees heard their personal greeting when they passed by a designated RFID reader.

The Nest Haunted House takes advantage of RFID to personally spook visitors. If guests opt-in to the system, during the tour they will see a tombstone with their name and birthdate, view projected images of themselves and friends bloodied and zombie-like, and hear their name called out by actors.

Guests Receive Ultimate VIP Treatment with RFID

Manhattan’s 13th Street Entertainment, parent company of a restaurant, a club and a lounge, is testing an RFID system that creates a more personal experience for VIP guests.  At the three businesses’ shared building, readers installed at entrances register customers carrying RFID-powered loyalty cards. The card’s unique ID is linked to the individual’s information on the server, such as name, photo, favorite food and reservation information. Staff members with mobile devices are updated when a new VIP guest enters. Staff can greet customers by name, ready their favorite drink and take them to their preferred table.  13th Street Entertainment chose RFID because it is effective and discreet – allowing the company to don personal treatment without disrupting VIP customers with questions.

During a PGA TOUR, RFID was used to improve fan experience. Special entrance tickets given to VIP guests contained RFID tags which, when in range of a reader, activated personal greetings flashed on a big screen.

The examples above show that RFID is sure to bring excitement to a wide variety of events, creating happy customers and happy businesses.  Please contact Impinj if you are interested in learning if RFID can improve your guest’s experience.

Image source: RFID Journal

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1. What are the emerging applications and markets for RFID technology in Italy?

From our standpoint there are three main markets which represent a concrete opportunity for RFID technologies in Italy: logistics, the fashion industry and asset tracking.

Logistics is nothing new. However, RFID has been growing steadily during the last few years and we forecast this trend to continue for the near future.

The fashion industry represents a key asset for the Italian economy and it has been experiencing a deep change recently. The shopping experience is especially affected by this change because of an increasing user-generated demand for in-store technologies. RFID is already involved in it, and can soon have a leading role in this transformation process.

Asset tracking is not easy in Italy for many reasons, including some morphologic aspect of our country and the lack of technological infrastructure in transportation (e.g., railways). This is widely seen as a big issue for the Italian economy. Tracking technologies, RFID included, have already been identified as viable solutions.

2. What solutions does Solos Identificazione have for these applications?

Our company is considered one of the leading solution providers in all three of those application areas. We have developed over time a solid network of partners through which we are now able to deliver a 360 degree range of solutions not only for the markets mentioned above, but for tracing, counterfeiting and grey market control too, just to name a few. In particular, we have been developing since a long time a unique experience for customers who need to add interactivity and software integration into their retail stores and showrooms.

3. Can you tell us about a recent deployment?

Our flagship cutting edge RFID solution is with no doubts our order entry showroom’s (in-store) environment. We provide an out-of-the-box solution, which includes RFID enabled labels combined with a wide range of reading devices, such as multitouch tables and tablet computers including the Apple iPad. This allows an unparalleled straightforward shopping experience for a store’s showroom customers. In the same market, we also offer a high-end solution, which allows fashion brands to introduce extended reality interaction during their sales campaign.

4. What do you want potential customers to know about RFID?

RFID is a mature technology which allows a wide range of businesses to track and control their end-to-end supply chain. It also gives them the chance to feed their CRM and ERP with a massive amount of data with the warranty of a short investment break-even.

Alessandro Vivarelli is the CEO of Solos Identificazione e Protezione. He has worked in the security industry since 1994.  Mr. Vivarelli earned a degree from I.T.I.S. Tullio Buzzi in 1986.

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S3Edge, a leading provider of RFID-based tracking solutions, worked with CCS to provide the RFID solution, and chose to use Microsoft BizTalk RFID middleware. The solution utilized a variety of products including Impinj Speedway Revolution readers and Smartrac ShortDipole wet inlays with built-in Impinj Monza 5 chips. To deploy the solution, workers installed Speedway Revolution readers equipped with two antennas at each of the plant’s assembly lines, and at each shipping dock door. Metal carts transporting contents were tagged with passive RFID tags.

According to Suresh, tagged items are monitored by readers throughout the assembly line. In addition, when items are transported out of the plant via a forklift, readers mounted above the dock doors detect the units that are leaving. The forklift driver is able to view the read results, which show what the forklift is carrying, along with a confirmation if all units meet shipping criteria. Staff members can use handheld readers to detect any missing items.

During his presentation, Suresh reported that since the installation in September 2011, there has been significant reduction of hazards, as staff members no longer have to monitor items to be shipped in high traffic areas. Additionally, he’s seen a 33% improvement in productivity and an 80-90% reduction in errors. CCS saw a return on its investment in less than 2 years.

To read more, click here.

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For the pilot, MPI Label Systems developed special RFID tags, encasing Smartrac ShortDipole M5 inlays (powered by Impinj Monza 5 chips) in plastic and foam to improve on-metal readability. Academia and Moxie Retail then tagged all shopping baskets and metal-wire carts, and mounted 25 Impinj Speedway Revolution four-port RFID readers, Antenna Hub multiplexers, and 150 Motorola reader antennas on product shelves and counters throughout the store.

As shoppers moved around the store, the Speedway readers captured location data from the baskets’ and carts’ tags. Academia middleware received and interpreted the location data, and communicated that data to Moxie Retail’s software. Moxie Retail’s software was then able to analyze location data in comparison with the products in that area, and provide information to the retailer about which products were generating the most customer interest and dwell time.

The retailer was able to use Moxie Retail software to analyze the relationship between the customer’s route through the store, where and how long the customer paused, and what he or she ended up purchasing.
The retailer plans to return the Moxie Retail system to the store to see how the store’s rearranged displays have impacted shoppers’ store routes and subsequent purchases.

Moxie Retail intends to market its solution worldwide, and may even choose to offer it on a permanent basis to certain retailers. Using the Moxie Retail temporary solution is cheaper for retailers than installing a permanent system, but there are many advantages to long-term installation. For instance, stores could set up software to give alerts based on read data, such as an alert to put another employee on checkout duty if a lot of carts and baskets go into motion within a short period of time.

Learn more about Moxie Retail’s RFID-enabled solution in the full article.

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The Speedway xArray is a game-changing reader system optimized for wide-area monitoring. When ceiling-mounted at fifteen-feet high, Speedway xArray utilizes its beam-forming antenna array to monitor tags within a 40-foot diameter in real-time. The xArray can distinguish 52 different antenna beams which radiate a linear pattern in both the horizontal and vertical paths providing tag direction and real-time location assignment. The Speedway xArray is optimized to read many thousands of tags very quickly, and can differentiate tags of interest from the rest of the field.

An Impinj demo at RFID Journal LIVE! gave the industry a first taste of the Speedway xArray reader system’s incredible capability. Staff wore RFID tags inside Impinj’s 30 by 50 foot booth which was monitored by a single xArray mounted overhead. Each staff person’s location and movement was tracked on a large screen as the xArray located their position within the booth in real-time.

Speedway xArray is an exciting new development in the RFID world, as it is the first product designed for wide-area monitoring applications while maintaining backwards compatibility with portal applications.

Interested in the Speedway xArray? Read more here.

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Best in Show Finalists: Indy RS500 Reader SiP and Speedway xArray reader system
Stop by our booth to check out two new products which were named finalists for RFID Journal’s “Best in Show” Award:

The Indy RS500 SiP is a completely integrated reader solution in a small surface mount package that enables fast time-to-market with low development risk. Building on the market-leading Indy reader chip technology, the Indy RS500 SiP only needs three connections (DC power, UART communication and an antenna) to start reading tags. Unlike embedded reader chip solutions that require greater investment due to complexity in RF design, manufacturing and certification, the Indy RS500 has no external components, is fully tested and meets regulatory requirements. The Indy RS500 is designed to work as a SMT (surface mount technology) component in a standard PCB manufacturing process, which eliminates costly mechanical hardware and RF cables that are typically required with reader modules on the market today. Learn more.

The Speedway xArray is a game-changing RFID reader system—the first product designed to meet the requirements for wide-area monitoring applications while maintaining backwards compatibility with portal applications. The Speedway xArray system provides wide-area monitoring through its beam-forming antenna array, which delivers full power throughout a 40 foot diameter when ceiling-mounted at 15 feet high. The xArray system can distinguish 52 different antenna beams providing for location assignment within the read zone, and the antennas radiate a linear pattern in both the horizontal and vertical paths in order to read tags in any orientation. The reader itself is optimized to read many thousands of tags very quickly, and to distinguish tags of interest from the rest of the field .. Moreover, Impinj has added robust tag direction capability that has been proven accurate even in difficult, real world environments. Learn more.

Listen to Presentations – Powered by Impinj

Interested in hearing great case studies of solutions powered by Impinj or learning more about embedded RFID? Be sure to attend one of the presentations below:

April 30, 10:00am: Embedded RFID Preconference Workshop featuring Shahrokh Shahidzadeh, Sr. Principal Technologist, Intel and Chris Diorio, Impinj co-founder and CTO.

April 30, 5:45pm: How EADS Group Manages RFID Change featuring speakers from Airbus, Eurocopter, Astrium and Cassidian.

May 1, 8:30am: How Carrier Made Excellent Manufacturing Even Better With RFID. Manufacturing plant deploys RFID system to create an automated shipping and component verification solution in a high-volume and high-velocity environment.

May 1, 10:45am: Embedded RFID Adds Value to Consumer Electronics. Shahrokh Shahidzadeh of Intel describes how embedded RFID technology enables a variety of game-changing applications.

May 1, 1:30pm: Update on the Veterans Health Administration Enterprise-wide RTLS Deployment. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rolls out an enterprise-wide RTLS for its Veterans Health Administration (VHA) division.

May 1, 1:30pm: A Business-Driven Enterprise Architecture Approach to Transformation. Bell Helicopter maximizes business results and the benefits offered by RFID technology.

May 1, 1:30pm: How American Apparel Leverages RFID at Stores and in Its Supply Chain. American Apparel’s RFID solution enables the company to benefit from 99.8 percent inventory accuracy, reduced shrinkage, high employee morale and more.

May 1, 3:10pm: ATK Uses RFID to Create. ATK, an aerospace, defense, and commercial products manufacturing company, uses RFID to improve process efficiency.

May 1, 4:00pm: RFID Improves Management of Emergency Medicine Kits. The pharmacy department of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) employs an RFID solution to help stock emergency medication kits used throughout the hospital.

May 1, 4:00pm: Mexican Department Store Chain Uses RFID to Improve Order Management and Inventory Accuracy. Liverpool Department store and 2,300 of its suppliers improve shipping, management, and inventory with RFID.

May 2, 9:00am: Richardson, Texas Police Department Uses RFID to Track Critical Assets. Police department tracks assets with RFID solution to improve police equipment security.

May 2, 10:30am: 2013 RFID Journal Award Finalists Presentations

May 2, 1:00pm: 2013 RFID Journal Awards

Join the Fun!

Party at The Pub – Stop by the Impinj booth to pick up your VIP pass to the Impinj and SMARTRAC party on May 1 from 5:30-7:30pm! The event will be held at The Pub at Pointe Orlando. Dinner, drinks, and beer from the RFID-powered pour-your-own-beer wall will be available! RSVP.

Powered by Impinj Booths – look for the Powered by Impinj shield throughout the show floor and stop in to learn more about innovative solutions built around our leading technology.

UHF Badge Contest – visit the Impinj, SimplyRFID and Zebra booths to see videos captured of you and enter this RFID-enabled contest with a grand prize worth $500.

Live Walk-Through of Show Floor – Not attending the show? Join us on May 2 at 11am EDT for a live video walk-through of the Impinj demonstrations and the show floor. Visit our Google Plus page to view the footage or sign up to have the direct link delivered to your inbox.

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The system is made up of RFID-tagged badges and a combination of readers by Impinj, ThingMagic and MPI Label Systems. Read data is collected by dwinQ software, and is forwarded to the user’s selected social network.

How It Works
At the Paris Motor Show, attendees arrived at the Nissan booth and were invited to participate in a variety of interactive activities, and share their experiences on Facebook or Twitter. Those interested entered their social media login information on an iPad. Each person’s specific login information was then linked to the unique ID number encoded on his or her RFID-enabled badge.

Individuals then proceeded through twelve RFID reader stations offering various photo booths and games. At one station, a touch screen led the visitors through a series of steps to take and superimpose a picture of them on the cover of Elle magazine, promoting Nissan’s Micra Elle car model. An RFID reader read each person’s tagged badge, dwinQ’s social-media platform linked the appropriate badge ID number with the user’s social media account, and then posted the photo update on his or her page.

At RFID-enabled kiosks displaying information about new Nissan cars, visitors were invited to swipe their badges at nearby readers and then press “like.” The kiosk’s information and picture were then posted on visitors’ Facebook or Twitter pages.

Other stations gave attendees the opportunity to design their own cars, create their own sounds for the Leaf electric car, or take their photo in a Nissan NV200 and then share it all on social media via RFID.

Nissan used a smaller version of the solution during last year’s Leaf Tour in six Scandinavian cities. Each person signed up, received a RFID card linked to his or her social media login information, and then got into a Nissan Leaf. He or she tapped their card near a reader inside the car, which prompted the system to record a 15-second video of the user in the car, and post it on his or her social networking site.

At the Geneva Motor Show in March, Nissan used the dwinQ solution, which consisted of 17 “sharing stations”, equipped with RFID readers, and provided the same types of picture and game experiences as those offered at the Paris event.

The dwinQ system was also used by Nissan at the Paris Marathon’s Runners Expo. Participants took pictures of themselves, superimposed to appear to be wearing NASCAR uniforms, and then shared them with their Facebook and Twitter followers via Dwinq’s RFID system.

Benefits
The dwinQ RFID solution has provided an interactive and fun experience for attendees at trade shows, and has utilized those same attendees to market the Nissan brand. At the Paris Motor Show alone, it is estimated that the Nissan message reached a total of 400,000 social-network members. dwinQ estimates that for each person who uses its social-media solution, the message reaches 500-800 people.

Continue reading about RFID and social media.

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The RPD began using RFID in September 2011, as part of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded initiative to track uniforms to ensure that they do not end up in the wrong hands. The Richardson Police Department realized that it made sense to expand the initiative to track all police gear. For assistance with this project, RPD turned to RFID solution developer GlobeRanger, who helped the police department find the best tags for its application.

GlobeRanger used washable UHF RFID laundry tags on uniforms, and chose to tag other RPD assets with a variety of Xerafy UHF EPC Gen 2 tags, due to their superior read-on-metal capabilities. The Titanium Metal Skin RFID label powered by Impinj’s Monza 5 chip proved ideal for tracking handguns and other metallic items requiring discreet tags, due to its small size (1.77 x 0.22 x 0.03 in.), 128 bits of user memory, and ability to be printed with a barcode or readable text.

How It Works
Each officer reports to the RPD quartermaster station to collect and return his or her uniform and equipment at the start and end of each shift. When the officer presents his or her ID card, it is read by an HF reader. The employee’s information then pops up on a computer screen, displaying the person’s role and necessary gear. The quartermaster then pulls the listed items from inventory and places them on a GlobeRanger smart table, powered by an Impinj Speedway Revolution reader. The smart table automatically reads the unique ID encoded to each item’s tag, and updates the data in the computer to show that those items have been checked out by that employee. When an officer returns from a shift, he or she again places the items on the smart table, the Speedway reader reads the tags, the inventory is automatically updated via Globeranger’s GR-AWARE PD software, and the quartermaster returns them to storage.

Patrol officers also use Motorola handhelds powered by Impinj Indy RFID reader chips to take inventory of the equipment within their cars. The data from the readers is automatically uploaded to the GR-AWARE software, updating the chain-of-custody record to track which officer last had each specific piece of equipment. Previously these inventory processes, which included documenting the serial numbers of each piece of equipment manually, took a total of 30 minutes per shift—now they are done automatically.

Benefits
The system has reduced inventory time by 30 minutes per shift—time that policemen can now use to patrol the streets. The system is also saving the department an estimated $9,000 per car per year in terms of labor costs and improved efficiencies. Additionally and perhaps most importantly, the police department uniforms and assets are accurately tracked and stored, preventing potentially dangerous misuse of RPD assets, and making the city of Richardson a little bit safer.

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In his book, Silver says that making good predictions depends on more than just data, you also need to understand the fundamentals of how a process works. I particularly enjoyed Mr. Silver’s discussion on the use of simulation models in predicting outcomes of various scenarios. Successful simulation tools do more than provide a prediction, they also allow the user to ask why and provide explanations that pure data analytics can’t.

We have developed the Impinj Store Performance Simulator (SPS) for retail operations specifically to help retailers visualize the impact of item-level RFID on store performance. Retailers who have worked with us on SPS see it as a powerful storytelling tool that brings all their disciplines together (finance, store operations, supply chain, merchandising, loss prevention, inventory management) in a common understanding of how the business runs and the potential for improvement. And, a few retailers even see simulation as a tool they can use to plot their course toward becoming a truly data driven business.

In his book, Silver quotes the statistician E. P. Box as saying that “all models are wrong but some models are useful.” Simulation is not just about getting a correct prediction. The mere act of trying to build a model of how your business runs and how it responds to changes has many benefits for an organization. Chief among these benefits are very low cost experimentation (virtual A/B testing), experiential learning (think video game versus text book), and consolidation of tribal knowledge. I invite you to try out the Impinj Store Performance Simulator to see how it can help you gain insight into the trade-offs and opportunities as you seek to improve store operations.

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