Bob Trebilcock

Making memories with automatic identification
May 2, 2008

Just when I thought I’d heard and seen everything, I learned something new.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking to commercial aerospace and defense contractors like Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed Martin about how they’re applying RFID technologies, especially in their maintenance, repair and overhaul operations.

At Modern, we write often about RFID in the retail supply chain or in automotive assembly lines. But some of the most innovative applications I’ve come across lately have been in aerospace, where repair facilities have to keep track of thousands of parts when they overhaul an aircraft.

After interviewing Boeing the other day, I got an e-mail from Denis Boulet, the vice president for corporate business development at MacSema, a company that makes contact memory buttons, and a company I had never heard of in the automatic identification space.

Now, while I have been writing about voice, bar codes and RFID for the past decade, I wouldn’t know a contact memory button from a shirt button. But, it turns out the technology has been around for nearly two decades. After selling to the military for years, MacSema now wants to find a broader audience for the technology, which is read much like a bar code but has the read/write capabilities of an RFID tag on steroids.

So, what exactly is a memory button? According to Boulet, it’s a battery-free read/write electronic data storage technology. The buttons, which can be attached to about anything, are designed to perform in extreme operating environments associated with military, aerospace, utility, transportation and industrial applications.

“The buttons can be very, very small,” Boulet said. “But they are very, very rugged. They have been certified by the Department of Defense and last for up to 100 years or more.”

What’s more, they have memory capacities like a flash drive, ranging from 256 bytes up to 1 gigabyte, but come in a very small package. “A 1 gigabyte button has a diameter of about 1 inch, is less than a quarter-inch thick and weighs about 5 grams,” Boulet said.

Like a flash drive, the devices can store data in any format—a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a PDF document, or any other program you might use. In the field, an operator accesses files by touching the button with a probe connected to a mobile computer or PDA. Data downloads at very fast speeds. Files can then be updated on the computing device and stored again on the button or updated to a database on a central server. “You use the button the same way you’d use the hard drive on your computer,” Boulet explained.

The result is that unlike a bar code, a memory button is a true database of information that can travel with a part or product. “In theory, you could put a 1 gigabyte button at the front of an aircraft and download a complete list of every part and component on that plane when it leaves the factory,” Boulet said.

The Department of Defense uses memory buttons to track the maintenance history of helicopter blades, submarine propellers, field radio equipment and the configuration management of Humvees. An Apache helicopter has about 200 buttons. Boulet sees other applications for railroad locomotives, pylons in electric generation plants, or tracking products that will be in use for years, like hazardous waste containers.

I can imagine other applications as well, like keeping track of the repairs done to the ten-year-old Honda Accord sitting in my driveway, or the maintenance history of critical equipment in a factory or distribution center.

Most of all, I was reminded of the broad portfolio of technologies those of us in manufacturing, distribution and logistics have at our disposal today to get the job done. 

Let me know if you’ve come across memory buttons in your operations, or other unique uses for automatic identification technologies.

Posted by Bob Trebilcock on May 2, 2008 | Comments (0)