CHEP: The Net of Things

PART A: Forced by operational inefficiencies in its own business model, CHEP, the market leader in the rental pallet business, became an early adopter of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Having proven the effectiveness of the technology for internal operations with a pilot test, CHEP now had to find clients who want to adopt the technology-enabled services in order to pay for a large scale roll out. The case traces CHEP’s challenges associated with the development and deployment RFID in its own operation and raises questions of how to proceed with potential IT-enabled change at the enterprise and supply chain level, without spoiling relationships with current clients and maintaining its core business. PART B: In fall 2007, Brian Beattie and Puneet Sawhney looked back at CHEP’s RFID initiative and the progress that has been made since the 2003 decision to further incorporate the technology into its assets. While the original intent of tagging all pallets did not materialize, considerable progress had been made into quantifying the benefits of RFID adoption. Industry-wide developments had changed the scope of the RFID initiative from simply tagging the asset pool to creating value added service for CHEP’s clients. Overall, RFID had yet to revolutionize the supply chain, but the evolution of technology and the innovation of RFID related products and services had aided CHEP in maintaining its market leadership in the pallet business and enabled CHEP to created new lines of business

Integrated ZigBee RFID sensor networks for resource tracking and monitoring in logistics management

The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which includes passive and active systems and is the hottest Auto-ID technology nowadays, and the wireless sensor network (WSN), which is one of the focusing topics on monitoring and control, are two fast-growing technologies that have shown great potential in future logistics management applications. However, an information system for logistics applications is always expected to answer four questions: Who, What, When and Where (4Ws), and neither of the two technologies is able to provide complete information for all of them. WSN aims to provide environment monitoring and control regarded as When and What , while RFID focuses on automatic identification of various objects and provides Who (ID). Most people usually think RFID can provide Where at all the time. But what normal passive RFID does is to tell us where an object was the last time it went through a reader, and normal active RFID only tells whether an object is presenting on site. This could sometimes be insufficient for certain applications that require more accurate location awareness, for which a system with real-time localization (RTLS), which is an extended concept of RFID, will be necessary to answer Where constantly. As WSN and various RFID technologies provide information for different but complementary parts of the 4Ws, a hybrid system that gives a complete answer by combining all of them could be promising in future logistics management applications. Unfortunately, in the last decade those technologies have been emerging and developing independently, with little research been done in how they could be integrated. This thesis aims to develop a framework for the network level architecture design of such hybrid system for on-site resource management applications in logistics centres. The various architectures proposed in this thesis are designed to address different levels of requirements in the hierarchy of needs, from single integration to hybrid system with real-time localization. The contribution of this thesis consists of six parts. Firstly, two new concepts, Reader as a sensor and Tag as a sensor , which lead to RAS and TAS architectures respectively, for single integrations of RFID and WSN in various scenarios with existing systems; Secondly, a integrated ZigBee RFID Sensor Network Architecture for hybrid integration; Thirdly, a connectionless inventory tracking architecture (CITA) and its battery consumption model adding location awareness for inventory tracking in Hybrid ZigBee RFID Sensor Networks; Fourthly, a connectionless stochastic reference beacon architecture (COSBA) adding location awareness for high mobility target tracking in Hybrid ZigBee RFID Sensor Networks; Fifthly, improving connectionless stochastic beacon transmission performance with two proposed beacon transmission models, the Fully Stochastic Reference Beacon (FSRB) model and the Time Slot Based Stochastic Reference Beacon (TSSRB) model; Sixthly, case study of the proposed frameworks in Humanitarian Logistics Centres (HLCs). The research in this thesis is based on ZigBee/IEEE802.15.4, which is currently the most widely used WSN technology. The proposed architectures are demonstrated through hardware implementation and lab tests, as well as mathematic derivation and Matlab simulations for their corresponding performance models. All the tests and simulations of my designs have verified feasibility and features of our designs compared with the traditional systems

Passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Museum Collections

Keeping a collection organized and accounted for is a never-ending struggle for museums of every type. New to museums and the collections management field, Radio Frequency Identification is a growing technology that museums can implement to keep track of the location, status, condition, and movement of their objects. Objects are labeled with RFID “tags” which enable them to communicate custom information to a reader and ultimately a database. This implementation would save time, money, and stress among collections staff members. Using the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, as my subject museum, I propose implementing a pilot program to test the viability of this RFID technology within the confines of a museum collection. A period of four months will be used to install and test an RFID system within a portion of the collection, after which data gathered will be used to determine the viability of the RFID system

Fashion Industry

Fashion is a lot more than providing an answer to primary needs. It is a way of communication, of distinction, of proclaiming a unique taste and expressing the belonging to a group. Sometimes to an exclusive group. Currently, the fashion industry is moving towards hyperspace, to a multidimensional world that is springing from the integration of smart textiles and wearable technologies. It is far beyond aesthetics. New properties of smart textiles let designers experiment with astonishing forms and expressions. There are also surprising contrasts and challenges: a new life for natural fibers, sustainable fabrics and dyeing techniques, rediscovered by eco-fashion, and "artificial apparel," made of wearable electronic components. How is this revolution affecting the strategies of the fashion industry

Cyber-physical systems in the re-use, refurbishment and recycling of used electrical and electronic equipment

The aim of the research outlined in this paper is to demonstrate the implementation of a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) within the End of Life (EoL) processing of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE). The described system was created by reviewing related areas of research, capturing stakeholder’s requirements, designing system components and then implementing within an actual EoL EEE processer. The research presented in this paper details user requirements, relevant to any EoL EEE processer, and provides information of the challenges and benefits of utilising CPSs systems within this domain. The system implemented allowed an EoL processer to attach passive Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to cores (i.e. mobile phones and other IT assets) upon entry to the facility allowing monitoring and control of the core’s refurbishment. The CPS deployed supported the processing and monitoring requirements of PAS 141:2011, a standard for the correct refurbishment of both used and waste EEE for reuse. The implemented system controls how an operator can process a core, informing them which process or processes should be followed based upon the quality of the core, the recorded results of previous testing and any repair efforts. The system provides Human-Computer Interfaces (HCIs) to aid the user in recording core and process information which is then used to make decisions on the additional processes required. This research has contributed to the knowledge of the advantages and challenges of CPS development, specifically within the EoL domain, and documents future research goals to aid EoL processing through more advanced decision support on a core’s processes

Harvesting Energy of Radio Frequency

Renewable Energy sources are the center of attraction for research and development all over the world nowadays. Oil and Gas are no more the main source of Energy, consequently the demand of a lasting cheap source of energy that is environmental friendly, is the main challenge recently. During the last decade, power consumption has decreased opening the field for energy harvesting to become a real time solution for providing different sources of electrical power. Energy Harvesting is a new technology that is going to make a revolution in the coming decade. Energy Harvesting is a technique to provide alternative sources of energy that are environmental friendly and low in cost. Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting is one of the methods to provide electrical energy from the ambient Radio Frequency Energy that already exists in the environment. For example Hand phones can be directly charged from Radio frequencies in the environment like 915 MHz. Laptops can be charged by frequencies like 2.45 GHz. RFID passive tags can be powered by these radio frequencies without the supply of any batteries increasing the range of passive RFID tags to longer distances with lower cost. Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting can provide a world with batteryless devices. With RF Energy Harvesting, the true mobility can be achieved where mobile devices do not depend on centralized power sources for charging. Instead they make use of the existing energy in the environment

Design of RFID-enabled Aircraft Reverse Logistics Network Simulation

The reverse logistics (RL) of aircrafts pose a big challenge to its owners due to the complexity of its RL network, and the inherit problems of realizing a reliable system for efficiently monitoring and tracking the numerous parts of end-of-life (EOL) aircrafts in the RL network. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, through its automatic and wireless data capture capability, offers great potential for counteracting this problem. Although widespread and cost-effective, traditional barcode system, unlike RFID technology, requires manual scanning and line-of-sight for its use. In this research, thorough review of literature was conducted to identify the technological and economical impacts of RFID technology in both forward and RL network, and the knowledge acquired was employed to develop a scenario based approach for determining suitable RFID solutions for use in different sections of the EOL aircraft RL network. Process maps for case-level barcode tagging, item-level RFID tagging, case-level RFID tagging and pallet-level RFID tagging in EOL aircraft RL were developed and simulated in Arena simulation software in order to comparatively analyze the Return-On-Investment (ROI) of the different RFID technology levels. The results of our research, focusing on passive RFID technology, demonstrate that use of RFID technology in EOL aircraft RL network offers great potential compared to barcode system; however, the high initial investment cost of RFID technology deployment may necessitate proper planning, such as business process re-engineering (BPR), tag reuse and phased implementation, to achieve more positive ROI

Integrated Advance Data Storage Technology for Effective Construction Logistics Management

Abstract This paper presents a study on applying an integrated application of RFID, GPS and GSM technology for mobile, pervasive and ubiquitous tracking and locating of any objects in construction supply chain and logistics. Accurate and timely identification and tracking of resource are vital to operating a well managed and cost efficient construction project. RFID integrated with the GPS provides an opportunity to uniquely identify materials and to locate and track them in a real time basis using minimal or no worker input where transmission of data from the system to the central database will be carried out with the help of standard cellular phone communications networks technology such as GPRS and SMS. In this research GIS will be used for analyzing and representing collected data. The authors believe that full automation of the construction supply chain and logistics can increase the efficiency and productively and lead to reductions in project costs and time