RFID TECHNOLOGY: IT IS SMALL, IT IS SMART

I happened to read some marvelous articles on how the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology was doing in various sectors, including service sector and commerce/industry sector. Though I was so very well aware of the role this particular ICT was playing not only in object tracking and supply chain management system, but in various other service sectors also, and the world was not enough. Just, to reckon and beckon a few:

• Traffic, Transportation and ticketing: This means Toll collection at highways and automatic vehicle location tracer. Obviously, this includes the ticketing system at Delhi metro and other metro trains. Further, in India, a committee headed by Mr. Nandan Nilekani (head of India's UID project) has recommended adopting passive RFID technology of ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) to address delays and congestion at toll collection points, besides blocking the nearly Rs 300 crore annual revenue leakage of the National Highway Authority of India. The proposal has been accepted.

• Healthcare: Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals need technology to combat drug counterfeiting which needs improved visibility throughout the supply chain. Further, RFID Tags on the instruments and readers on the sterilization chambers and storage cabinets can help tell us the status of proper cleaning. Apart from this, the patient identification and location assistance are sometime very necessary in view of rendering special health services even from a distance.

• Warehousing including Warehousing and Transportation for PDS: RFID has proved itself a great facilitator for Public Distribution System. The various shortfalls of the PDS supply chain have been attempted to be trounced by the ICT tools, primarily online communications, mobile technology, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and RFID. Maharastra state government has also been pioneer in the initiative and has, reportedly, collaborated with Spanco to computerize complete PDS supply chain, through a grand ICT project, expected to complete by year 2012. The project shall use locationing technology such as RFID and GPS to identify and monitor the movement of the produce and streamline PDS activities. RFD is considered as one time solution to all supply chain related problems.

• Retailing and Supply Chain Management: Probably this is the most important sector, where RFID has already proved itself an integral part of the strategy of enhancement of total business revenues, by cutting across various expenses related with maintenance tracking and minimizing  of store inventory. As a result, it provide vendors with real-time visibility of their inventory at various stages in the supply chain, which in turn, enables the vendors to minimize inventory ageing

I find, how beautifully the overall behavioral patterns of commerce could have been shaped into a mammoth success with the use of RFID tags. Various success stories of industries, service and government sector which made a high altitudinal difference in the balance sheets on one hand and quality of outcomes (not of outputs), as a result of introducing the RFID technology in their functional architecture have proved beyond doubt that RFID was a key enabler and prime factor to enthuse competitiveness in overall scenario of their attempts to accomplish something big, and be different from others.

My concern in writing this blog was somehow to explore various avenues and fields in various sectors where the technology was being used. In brevity, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that is meant to make use of Radio Frequencies to identify uniquely and automatically some commodity, group of commodity, individual or group of items. A basic RFID system consists of three main components: a tag containing a microprocessor; a reader and its antennas; and one computer equipped with a middleware program where the corresponding software takes care of all the data and follows the business rules of that organization, as coded therein.

There is big difference, rather no comparison, between RFID and traditional Automatic Identification and Data Capture i.e. AIDC (bar coding and the like). The most important advantage of using RFID is that RFID tag requires no manual tracing since it creates an object level identification. The core competencies of RFID technology are, but not limited to, multiple tags objects reading capability; more and more data storage capability with data read/write capabilities interwoven.

In short, RFID is a tool which provides a 'unique identification' or UID or AADHAR for living and non-living, both. It is very cost-effective in terms of the results it provides for decision making on one hand and monitoring various objectives and parameter, on the other, of any organization of various fields as mentioned above. The real-time data transfer and data collection ensuring sharing thereof among multiple stakeholders including intra-and inter-organizational business processes is possible through RFID.

As per a report from Business Standard, three key factors have driven a significant increase in RFID usage, i.e decreased cost of equipment and tags, increased performance to a reliable 99.9 per cent and a stable international standard around UHF passive tags. Passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) tags cost anywhere between Rs 30 and Rs 80 per tag but can last for up to two decades. Similar Chinese tags cost Rs 12-20 but their range and durability could be lower. This report says that the estimated market size of the RFID industry in India is estimated around Rs 450-500 crore and said to be growing at 30 per cent per annum.

But the use of RFID in one field, which has probably been unnoticed hitherto in Madhya Pradesh, and which prompted to write me this blog was: RFID IN CATTLES, rather RFID TECHNOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF DAIRY SECTOR. As per an article from rfidjounal, tracking cows and other milch animals in dairies was one of the first applications of radio frequency identification. Currently, RFID is being employed by many dairies worldwide, for a variety of applications. Chitale Dairy, in Maharashtra (India), is using a system developed at Bombay Veterinary College that combines RFID and cell-phone technologies to track data related to the health of cows. A RFID tag is punched on ear of cow and it sends information about her daily dietary needs and feeding details, among many other information, to a radio sensor located inside the farm premises. This, in turn, communicates with computer systems at the BG Chitale Dairy located in Bhilavadi village of Sangli, Maharashtra. The data collected by this system is then accessed in real time by dairy managers and other supervisors for carrying out specific activities, such as monitoring the health and changing the nutritional mix. This process is done for all the cattle in the Chitale Dairy.

Thousands of milk farmers in India in Maharashtra and Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu are becoming a part of a technology revolution that can have a far reaching impact on milk productivity of the Indian dairy industry.

RFID is small, but smart. 

WE NEED TO PUSH MORE

As per the information of CWET (Centre for Wind Energy Technology) , GoI, the total capacity of wind electricity installed in India as on 31-03-2010 was 11806.69 MW. The details are given below:

Sl. No	State	Capacity in MW
1	Tamil Nadu	4906.74
2	Karnataka	1472.75
3	Maharashtra	2077.70
4	Rajasthan	1088.37
5	Andhra Pradesh	136.05
6	Madhya Pradesh	229.39
7	Kerala	27.75
8	Gujarat	1863.64
9	West Bengal	1.10
10	Others	3.20
	Total	11806.69

As per the report from Los Angeles Times, The American Wind Energy Association says China's total capacity to create electricity from its wind turbine installations come to 41,800 megawatts, while American-based turbines can put out 40,180 megawatts. Thus U.S. is behind China in wind power energy

The association said the U.S. wind market ended 2010 with 5,115 megawatts of new installations, just half of the record amount put up in 2009. And as 2011 began, about 5,600 megawatts of wind power capacity was under construction.

To date, 38 U.S. states have built utility-scale wind projects, with Texas at the top with 10,085 megawatts of capacity.

To Municipalities – Hotels built and run purely on environmentally friendly initiatives – One of such few cases

The Rodas (an EcoTel Hotel) in Powai (Powai, Mumbai) belonging to the EcoTel group of hotels (an international collection of hotels and resorts) claims to being eco-friendly,  and the case study undertaken by EcoTel team reveals some startling outcomes arisen out of wonderful inspiring initiatives. (Courtesy: http://powai.info/2010/04/28/what-makes-rodas-ecotel-powai-eco-friendly/).

Building Construction

·         The hotel’s façade with its dual layers i.e. external arches and columns and internal walls and glazed windows, increases the insulation for the building envelope, reducing energy losses.

·         The position of building, being erected in such a way that the centre-point of its parabolic shape faces the north-east, plays an important role in reducing the effect of direct sunlight and thus helps the hotel save on the energy requirement for air-conditioning and lighting.

·         The cement used throughout the building is Portland Pozzalana (PPC), which uses 25% fly ash, a by-product of electric power generation.

·         All the wood used is either rubber wood  or medium density fibre (from the waste stalks of the cotton tree).

 

Rodas EcoTel Waste Management:

The management has laid emphasis on reducing waste at source by ensuring that the guest laundry is lightly folded and delivered to the guests in jute baskets, and not in plastic or paper covers. Further the kitchen waste is systematically and carefully segregated according to the four-bin system, and food waste is sent for composting. Guestrooms feature two bins – one for recyclables and another for non-recyclables. It is noticeable that sale of vermin compost as produced from such waste management generates an additional income.

 

Rodas EcoTel Energy Management

·         No use of boilers to heat water: The excess heat generated by the air conditioners is reused to heat water up to 50°C.

• The chilled water obtained from the air-conditioning system of the hotel is reused in general consumption after it is purified using ultra-violet rays.
• A power factor at at 0.97 to 0.99 is maintained which accrues a discount from local utility company. It encourages energy savings.

Rodas EcoTel Environment Commitment

• All refrigeration units use the gases 134A and 404A, which have zero ozone depletion potential, and are the most environmentally-friendly gases for such equipments.
• All detergents used have a very low/neutral pH value.
• Pest controlling is done through herbal.
• All hangers in the guestrooms’ wardrobe areas are made out of sawdust.

The question is: Whether the municipal corporations or States' department of excise of India can bring about a change in their policies with regard to allowing license for opening new resorts or hotels including allowing running of such hotels in their municipal areas or area jurisdiction only on the conditions that the environmental norms and initiatives as taken by EcoTel group of hotels are met with.

RENEWABLE BY A MUNICIPALITY

I want to share with you this news with great appreciation to all concerned who did it.

First of all, hats-off to the Mayor of Municipality of Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) of Municipality of Los Angeles committed in 2005 to ensure electricity utility's use of clean and green renewable energy from 5 percent to 20 percent by the year 2010. After the achievement, Mr. Antonio Villaraigosa, the Mayor of Municipality of Los Angeles said, "When I became Mayor, I set a goal to generate 20 percent of the City's power from renewable energy sources by 2010 and I am proud to say that we have achieved that goal".

The implementation of the commitments that were done to self creates marvels.

This 2010 goal was achieved through a combination of major projects and power agreements. In June 2009, LADWP began full operation of the Pine Tree Wind Power Plant (120 MW total output, the amount of CO2 displaced is roughly the same as removing 35,000 cars from the road or planting 1.4 million trees) - the largest wind farm owned by a Municipal Utility in US, in the Tehachapi Mountains. Wind power comprised nearly 50 percent of all LADWP's renewable energy in 2010 with small hydro-electric contributing 30 percent, geothermal/bio-mss based, 22 percent, and solar, 1 percent.