Patrick J. Sweeney II: The Three Keys to RFID Implementation
Thursday, August 10, 2006 -

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RFID Connections interviewed Patrick J. Sweeney II, President and CEO of ODIN technologies, Inc. to discover his latest work with the DoD and his Three Keys to RFID Implementation every company should follow.  

By John C. Havens
Features Editor 

RFID Connections: ODIN is providing the US DoD with the RFID infrastructure for its Defense Distribution Center.  What are the challenges involved in setting up an RFID infrastructure within the DoD? 

Patrick J. Sweeney II: There are a multitude of challenges.  The DoD's Defense Distribution Center Worldwide Network is the single most important and biggest RFID procurement, geographically, to date.  So the challenges range from the read rate required to international frequency issues, to a high level of diversity in the infrastructure.  One of the things that Odin Technologies is most proud of and that we’ve seen as a huge success and validation of the RFID technology is the DoD is requiring 100% cases be read on each palette coming through the dock door.  And we go through a very stringent acceptance testing protocol of the readers with twenty different tags, both Gen 1 and Gen 2, on various cases of different sizes coming through a dock door and they have to go through it ten times and be read 100% on each time.  That's far beyond what Wal-Mart and Target and the other retailers are doing who are using dock doors to read palette tags.  So the DoD is really quite a bit ahead of folks in their use and their requirements within the RFID perspective.  So 100% read rate on the case level of the dock door is certainly a unique challenge. 

The fact that this will be deployed across multiple facilities has to deal with the big issue around international frequency.  While the protocol is standard for the EPC Gen 2 Protocol, the frequency is diverse around the different countries where it’s deployed.  So having a good understanding of these issues helps with these challenges.  Fortunately from a testing perspective, Odin Technologies has been granted international licenses for using various frequencies in countries.  So we can test these things in our lab in the United States and the FCC has approved and granted us that.   

The third thing that makes it particularly challenging is it's a very diverse infrastructure.  Some of the DoD facilities may be as old as World War II and others might be brand new.  So you've got a challenge in trying to plan a very scalable system.  And then of course you've got things like training of different people.  And probably the biggest challenge from an RFID readability perspective is the fact that there are so many different types of materials being shipped in through these portals that have to be read.  It's one thing to easily read a case of toilet paper which is a very RF friendly type of material versus a muffler for a Hummer which is all metal or bottles of some sort liquid oil or something like that. It's a very diverse group of products that needs to be read as well.  

Are there similar challenges in commercial/industrial settings or does the DoD have some unique considerations? 

The biggest issue in terms of the DoD and the one that we're most cognizant of is: our mission is twofold.  Number one is to deploy the best and most reliable and most scalable RFID network in the world and number two is to not interrupt the DoD's mission.  So it's particularly challenging during wartime when logistics.  You should see some of these facilities, they're just amazing; the first one we deployed encompasses the equivalent of about thirty football fields with fifty or seventy five thousand types of supplies coming into that location.  It's awesome the breadth and the operations that are going on there.   

Our mission is critical there that we don't interrupt those missions.  So we've got teams starting at four o'clock in the morning, going zero four-hundred until the first shift starts at zero-eight, just to make sure we're not interfering.  And we've got teams working over weekends, and really, that's very unique to the DoD.  If you look at the multitude of our commercial clients, we don't really have those constraints, and the mission isn't nearly as critical.  

One of the other considerations compared to what some of your readers/listeners might find and compared to a typical Odin technologies client is that there are so many different products to be tagged.  So normally when we work with a retailer or a pharmaceutical company, for instance, they may have two or three representative products (a blister pack, a vial of liquids, a pill bottle) that represents their entire line.  So you only have to figure out the tagging strategy for that.  With someone like a DoD, a multitude of items come in, so it really creates a unique strategy in designing the RFID network and the interrogations zones to be optimized for the best quality read but yet make sure you're not spilling over into other read zones and getting ghost reads and that sort of thing.  So it was a great engineering challenge our guys were really excited about.  

In light of these challenges, what do you see as the one or two most important issues companies must address when planning their own RFID implementations? 

I'd say there are three issues that companies should address when they plan their own RFID implementations: Number One is learn that physics is the key to successful RFID; Number Two, realize there is no silver bullet; and, Number Three, follow a very proven process.  

Too many people tend to focus on RFID as a science project or use trial and error methodologies and the results they get are commensurate with that type of an effort.  If you look at how RFID works, at how radio frequency in particular works, there are very elegant equations and ways of describing the behavior of the RF phenomenon.  Maxwell's equations, for example.  Those can be a great predictor and a great foundation for setting up your RF network.  So Number One, understanding the physics and spending a lot of time.  We always say internally at ODIN, "measure twice and cut once" and that's something you should follow. 

Number Two, the fact there is no silver bullet means that not one reader can do all things well.  So make sure you partner with someone as you move forward who is basically a Switzerland who can look at a personnel or a dock door or a conveyer or an entranceway or something like that and say, "okay, this reader is best here, maybe we should use this type of handheld here, let's look at this RFID printer here."  And really realizing that there is no one set solution--every one of these needs to be determined, designed specifically based on business process and physical environment.   

And Number Three is follow a proven process.  Again, making sure that you're using either a Six Sigma or an ISO methodology to go through a very step by step process ensures that you’re not going to have any surprises, that you won't have these, 'gotchas' that put a project back six or eight weeks or end up doubling the budget because you're doing things by trial and error.  

So the three keys are Physics is the Key, There is no Silver Bullet when it comes to choosing One Hardware, and that you Should Follow a Proven Process. 

For companies that don't see an immediate need to move forward with RFID as a compliance issue but might want to consider closed loop systems, would you offer the same advice or would you recommend a different set of considerations? 

I'd offer the exact same advice from a foundational perspective; those three keys is where you want to start out from a planning perspective.  But from a closed loop application you're open to a lot more flexibility in terms of hardware, in terms of protocol and also in terms of the cost of the systems since you don't have to be adhering to the EPC Protocol or an ISO Protocol which you do when you're sharing information.  And because of that flexibility you can either find new cutting edge technologies such as battery-assisted tags or battery powered tags, or you can also use it to buy old technology which might work very well but because it doesn’t meet current spec you can get a terrific deal on.  So, I think there are some unique benefits to folks who are doing the closed-loop systems that open-loop systems may not have.  

Should every company begin making changes to anticipate RFID implementation?  If so, why? 

The Odin technologies' philosophy is that in five years, most manufacturing distribution or warehouse centric companies will have more RFID readers than telephones.  And that's a pretty big statement when you consider where the technology has come from just in the past couple of years, but it’s something that we're very confident in because of the value that it brings.  Clients today, if they're not under a mandate, they should look at this as allocating learning or educational or potentially even marketing dollars to get up to speed on this technology.  

We've seen it in the retail world again and again.  If you look at ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or Warehouse Management Systems or automated systems like that that Wal-Mart or Target adopted very aggressively going back several years and you find retailers like K-Mart or a JC Penny that didn't, it's very clear from an operational perspective who won there and who got the benefits. RFID is a very disruptive technology and it has the ability to create a strategic advantage.  And what you don't want to do is be left behind and trying to play catch up in a three or four year cycle just because you haven't invested any money in learning the technology and understanding its impact.  So, clearly understanding and getting up to speed and figuring out your internal value proposition is extremely important.  But not sticking your head in the sand is also critical.  Taking the ostrich approach is really just a recipe for disaster.  

About Patrick J. Sweeney II, President and CEO

Mr. Sweeney is a proven entrepreneur and technology visionary with a history of building successful companies. He is well recognized as a thought leader in the RFID industry with several patents in various stages of approval.  He is the author of RFID for Dummies, published by John Wiley & Sons. He has been interviewed in CIO Magazine, The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, and ABC News, among others. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and web casts. His combination of technical and business acumen help him form the vision and shape the direction of the emerging RFID industry. Mr. Sweeney’s involvement in many governing bodies and standards committees effectively transfers those ideas into policy.  

Mr. Sweeney founded Odin technologies in 2002 by recruiting the founder of the EPC protocol Dr. Daniel Engels, the Director of MIT’s Auto-ID lab. The company created the infrastructure space for RFID and continues to be the dominant player in the physics, deployment and testing of RFID systems. Their clients range from Fortune 50 leaders to the largest RFID network ever publicly competed for -- the US Department of Defense -- which ODIN won in May of 2006.

About ODIN technologies, Inc.

ODIN technologies is the leader in the physics of RFID solution design, deployment, and installation optimization software. RFID is all we do. Global corporations on four continents leverage ODIN technologies' expert engineers and patent-pending RFID optimization tools to achieve accuracy, visibility and speed in RFID deployments. In addition to client deployment services, ODIN technologies is also the publisher of the RFID Benchmark Series, the industry's first and most referenced head to head performance analysis of leading RFID tags and readers. ODIN's President and CEO, Patrick J. Sweeney II is also author of RFID for Dummies published by John Wiley & Sons. ODIN serves clients from offices in Virginia USA, Tokyo Japan and Budapest Hungary. www.ODINtechnologies.com

 



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