On-Demand Webinar:  Embedded RFID for Product Identification, Tracking & Anti-counterfeiting

Webinar: RFID Technology For Industry Products & Components.

Thank you for joining today's presentation on embedded RFID technology in rubber and plastics. My name are Rafal Sroka and I'm a global account manager supporting life science accounts for the Engineering Materials Group at Parker. Today, I'm joined by Andrew Glover.

Thanks for Rafal. My name is Andrew Glover. I work at the group level and technology innovation focusing on digital transformation, which for us is both digital products as well as digital operations.

Great. Thank you, Andrew. During today's presentation, we will cover the following topics. We'll have a brief overview about Parker's Engineered Materials Group. Then we'll jump into what RFID technology is. We'll talk about Parker's difference in the space. We will also cover RFID advantages. We'll review some application examples, and then we'll close the presentation with a question and answer session.

A little bit about Parker Hannifin. Parker is a motion to control company based in Cleveland, Ohio, with approximately $15 billion in revenue. Our global footprint extends 50 countries with 290 manufacturing plants. And now I'll turn it over to Andrew, and he will introduce what RFID technology is.

As Rafal said, we were going to get into what exactly this thing we all know is RFID is. RFID stands for radio frequency identification. Now, most of you have probably seen this all the way back in any CD or DVD you've ever purchased at the store. That's honestly where much of RFID started was kind of as an anti-theft device because of its cost effectiveness in that application. As we are looking to bring that into the industrial space there's additional benefits that these unique identifiers, as well as the ability to store information on these tags, bring to the table. And so it's used for both locating, storing information. Many different areas within the industrial space can utilize RFID to be that last mile, on the ground device.

When it comes to RFID. There are various kinds of tags. These generally involve around the frequency these tags work. The three most common that you're going to find are low frequency, high frequency and then ultra high frequency. You'll see these usually by the acronym they're on the left, LF, HF, or UHF. I will put out that RF is also known as NFC. Generally, that stands for near field communication. That's where you'll see a lot of that through phones when it comes to secure payments and things of that sort that are all around you on a daily basis.

The low frequency is also generally used in biological applications. So if you ever look at those tags that are used to identify dogs and farm animals, those are generally low frequency.

Most of what we see in the industrial world is in UHF. That really comes down to the fact that these tags are generally most cost effective due to the high volume since they are used in retail and the industrial space for many different things.

The form factors change dependent upon whether they are encapsulated, wet or dry inlays, or whether you're talking about low frequency and high frequency that require a coil. In terms of an antenna or ultra high frequency, which usually uses a more dipole form antenna that becomes a little more form fitting.

In terms of tags at the basis there is generally active versus passive tags. There are some derivatives of this, like the battery assisted passive tag, which uses the battery to help in the transmission of the information back from the tag to the reader. Generally in all of these, the power comes from the radio frequency unless you're talking specifically active tags, which have a battery to keep them on at all times. But this is really one of the big advantages of RFID is that you don't have a battery on board for the most part when you're talking passive, which allows them to go through really industrial processes of heat temperature ruggedness that you may not be able to get to with other technologies like Bluetooth or even more traditional, say, WIFI or GPS.

Then you can get into kind of more specific information on how the information on the tag is actually protected. So in terms of standard versus gamma resistant. We see that a lot in the medical world where things like gamma sterilization are common. But essentially, that's how you protect your flash memory from being erased as it's exposed to gamma radiation is a specific kind of lead protected tag versus the standard flash memory based.

Now we're going to get into what makes Parker's manufacturing technology different than what is traditionally seen on the market.

When it comes to how we embed the RFID, the RFID tags actually become part of the component themselves. This isn't a secondary operation where we ultimately place a tag and refill material that's either glued or epoxy in place. The tags are actually added during the manufacturing process, which helps both keep the form factor of the tag itself, as well as ensuring that the only way to remove said tag is by destroying the part.

Historically, within the engineer materials group, these tags have been put in molded shapes whether it be as simple as O-rings are more complex molded shapes like syringe tips. But we have also put these in plastic components. As you see with the container on the right.

Now to the advantages of RFID. RFID versus a traditional barcode really has benefits in the fact that you do not need line of sight in order to scan the information on the RFID tag. You don't have a 1-D or two dimensional reader that has to have true visual sight to the tag.

This also allows you to be able to read potentially hundreds or thousands of tags a second as you may take a box of devices that have tags in them and say, walk through a door. There's no orientation that you must follow. And you can also tune the reading distance depending upon how much power you put through the antenna.

You can also write information to the tags with their memory on board that you normally wouldn't be able to do with, say, a barcode that relies entirely on a database for its information.

One of the applications where this is most often seen is in terms of tracking inside of buildings. Traditionally, once something leaves your building, something like GPPs could be traditionally used. But inside of buildings that are generally giant metal houses, you can't really get a good GPS or even cell phone signal to these devices. So by building an architecture of RFID readers throughout your facility and then triangulating where they are within said facility, you can really get a good --within inches-- idea of where these things are. Once the architecture is built in terms of the readers and the software that you need to do the triangulation, the cost effectiveness of this really takes off because the tags are so inexpensive. When you actually look to add them to components, you're generally talking tens of thousands of dollars to set up. But the actual tags themselves at volume can generally be less than a cent a piece.

This allows you to find things if they're lost individually or just do more of a traditional track and trace as things move throughout your facility.

If you have a manufacturing execution system or other system thats similar in place, you can then also verify that components go through the needed processes in order to be good and kind of no-fault- forward as they move through your manufacturing process.

Another area where RFID is being used out in the industry is in companies that are trying to get on the "razor blade model" in terms of their capital costs and equipment. A lot of money is generally spent on this capital equipment, but it's generally sold into the market at near cost or very little margin. Terms of the future revenue coming through the disposable components that are sold by said OEM. RFID tags allow you to control how these are used in the field and also ensure overall that the machine understands whether or not an OEM component is being used in these applications.

So whether this be printer cartridges, surgical robots or other medical devices that are heavily involved around disposables at high volume, to make up the development costs that have been put into the capital equipment, the market is full of RFID tags around us in this sense.

And now the exciting part, and we've shown you a little bit about why RFID tags are in some initial uses from a 30,000 foot level. Now let's get into some specific examples that may be relevant to some of you on the phone today.

Our first case study is in the aerospace industry. This is actually where the technology first came into play in the early 2000s. Parker was looking to potentially both remove our liability, as well as the liability of some of the large aerospace companies by putting RFID tags into O-rings that were used within the landing gear and control systems of aircraft. This was done because we were getting a lot of counterfeiting that was coming in from the market, and we're looking for that protection. So the technology was patented and created in that 2007, 2008 time for this exact application.

The benefit here is that not only can you come back and scan an airplane to determine whether or not the part is what it's supposed to be from the print - just in a simple, is there an RFID tag there or is there not? But there's also the ability for these things to be read many months or years after they're installed. Unlike traditional external markings, which have a problem of being worn off an application. So a part can be followed through the entire manufacturing process installed on an airplane and then scanned six months to years later, with the same information available to you at that point in time, as you had when you first put it on said plane.

Our next case study is in the oil and gas market here, PMs of these heavy machinery are very important. Unlike traditionally where a RFID tag could be epoxyed on to a member or laser etched or mechanically etched with an identification number, these have problems due to the harsh conditions that these components ultimately see. The etches ultimately get covered with barnacles, or they can rust and then the epoxy tags ultimately fall off when exposed to really cold temperatures.

The RFID tags don't face this and can also be rewritten with important information that allows you to understand how many times a piece has been used and where it was used without needing the database present to validate this information.

Finally, we'll get into the medical space. This technology initially came into this space back when UDI compliance became a big deal for the FDA in the early 2010s. That database still exists and RFID tags are certainly used in space. But one of the more important things here is these tags can be incorporated into devices, written with information whether that comes from the OEM as the device goes through a supply chain, or even at point of use in terms of vials of patient blood rather than being handwritten on, can be written with the patient's information. And therefore not have to worry about losing the information of where this sample came from as they are in use.

Back over to Rafal for the wrap up.

Thank you, Andrew, for that great presentation. I'd like to cover a few key takeaways for embedded RFID before we conclude today. Again, embedded RFID may offer distinct advantages over non embedded options, especially in sensitive or harsh operating conditions.

Secondly, embedded RFID can be incorporated in many different rubber and plastic materials to meet your application's needs and form factor.

And RFID has many use cases. Those include product identification, location tracking, anti-counterfeiting and many others.

Please feel free to reach out to your application engineer or local Parker contact if you have any additional questions.