Bob Trebilcock

RFID: ODIN introduces the smart container

Contemporary supply chain management can be summed up in one word: Visibility. Warehouse and plant managers want visibility into the status of the orders they’re processing. Traffic managers want visibility into their inbound and outbound shipments. Supply chain professionals want visibility into how their network is performing. But even with the best systems in place, there are still black holes in the supply chain – those points between the nodes where no one really knows what’s going on for lack of visibility.

Visibility is one of the reasons so many companies were excited about RFID a few years ago. The technology came with the promise of being able to track the location of a product in real time from cradle to grave.

I had a pretty lively discussion about the state of RFID and visibility in the supply chain with Patrick Sweeney, the founder of ODIN Technologies, a company that posits itself as the leader in the physics of RFID solutions for healthcare, aerospace, financial services, and government agencies.

I figured I was talking to the right guy when I learned that Sweeney was also the author of RFID for Dummies. Let’s just say that no one ever went broke underestimating my intelligence. Better yet, he went to high school in my adopted hometown of Keene, New Hampshire. Turns out his mom was the banker who loaned me the money to buy my home. Talk about Six Degrees Of Separation. I was tempted to call this column: Local kid makes good.

ODIN, Sweeney explained, was founded around the idea that the physics of RFID has far more to do with the accuracy of a solution than a specific model of reader or tag. “We built the company over the last seven years by having a deep understanding of physics and by having a vendor neutral posture when it comes to hardware,” Sweeney said. Over that time, ODIN has been a prime RFID contractor for the Defense Logistics Agency, rolling out 71 RFID projects across the US. The company has an exclusive contract to be the prime RFID provider to Airbus.

“System design is our bread and butter,” Sweeney said. “For all of the above clients, we select, install and deploy the hardware. We have developed the most extensive RFID lab in the US, and we do benchmark reports. We have gotten to know the problems with deployments, the challenges of each of the various hardware vendors, and we’ve found ways of addressing the repeatable problems.”

After establishing his bona fides, what Sweeney really wanted to talk about is visibility. The company unveiled a new “self-inventorying SMART container” on Tuesday at RFID Journal Live, a product Sweeney believes “will fundamentally change the RFID space.”

What is it? “Think of a suitcase with a whole lot of intelligence built in,” Sweeney said.

The container is designed to close the visibility gap between the nodes in the supply chain, say between when a product leaves the factory and arrives at its next destination.

Here’s how it works. Magnets on the back of the container allow it to be magnetized onto the ceiling of a shipping container or truck trailer. Inside the container there is an onboard computer, a sophisticated power management system and a series of lithium ion batteries that can provide up to one year of battery life. In addition, the system uses a blend of technologies, including active and passive RFID along with WiFi, Satellite and GPS communications that provide an always-on connection from a warehouse, the deck of a ship in the middle of the ocean, or even the mountains of Afghanistan (the technology was developed for the military). There is even room to add sensors and mesh network capability.

“Attach it to a ceiling, punch in a security code, and in 60 seconds, you have a fully-functioning RFID system that will read anything inside the container with passive tags,” said Sweeney. “Since it has external communication technology, someone can go on a website and with a click of a mouse, see everything they have in their supply chain as well as where it’s located, in real time.”

The Navy has been piloting the technology for the last 18 months. Sweeney envisions a number of potential commercial applications.

For one, shippers could save a significant amount of time receiving containers, since the readers can provide an instantaneous and accurate, up-to-date inventory.

In industries like pharmaceutical, where security is critical, the container could be outfitted with light and door sensors to validate when a container is breached, or when product is added to or removed from the shipping container.

The third is that it could expedite inspections at Customs. “Let’s say you seal a container by a trusted agent at Hyundai in Korea,” said Sweeney. If nothing has changed when it arrives in Long Beach, it could be expedited through Customs rather than having to sit in the harbor for a few weeks waiting to be inspected.”

Sweeney, it turns out, can not only do RFID for dummies, he can also do math for dummies. “The Department of Defense alone has 900,000 ISO shipping containers,” he said. “In three years, this could be a $100 million business.”

I’m not a technologist, so I’m not sure how the SMART container will work in the field. But it strikes me that if the price is right, it really does get supply chain practitioners one step closer to the Holy Grail of complete supply chain visibility.

You can see a video of the SMART container in operation at YouTube.

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Posted by Bob Trebilcock on April 30, 2009 | Comments (4)