Sokymat Automotive Launches Miniature
RFID Laundry Transponder

jpg Germany’s Sokymat Automotive GmbH introduces a miniature laundry tag, the S-Tag10. The 13.56 MHz transponder, only 10mm wide and 2mm thick, claims to be one of the smallest laundry tags available on the market.

Ordinarily, manual handling is required for pre-sorting of soiled garments, linens, or mops in industrial laundries in order to allocate each one to the proper washing process. With RFID technology, this sorting process becomes much faster and more efficient, and can also be automated — something not possible with barcodes. Hygiene is thus improved and it is easier to avoid the loss of items thanks to seamless data management. For this application, specific wash-proof transponders resistant to aggressive chemical agents, moisture, dirt, heat, and pressure are necessary in order to guarantee a long lasting solution. The Sokymat Automotive S-Tag10 was developed with this goal in mind.

Like the S-Tag16 16mm HF transponder introduced last year, the S-Tag10 is a robust hermetically sealed laundry tag, highly resistant to aggressive chemicals and acids, as well as thermal and mechanical stress. Sokymat Automotive guarantees 100% reliability of the tag for 200 washing and drying cycles. The S-Tag family is available with a variety of different ISO 15693-compatible chips.

TAGSYS Announces Its White RFID
‘Button’ Tag for Personal Germents

jpg TAGSYS announces the release of the ARIO 370L-HL RFID tag. The tag’s unique button-like design improves service levels for businesses such as elder care facilities and hospitals. The ARIO 370L-HL’s white casing enables the tag to be sewn discretely onto light-colored items. By attaching it directly to laundered items guarantees garments will be returned to the proper owners.

“The ARIO 370L-HL tag is the product we’ve been waiting for to address the needs of our nursing home clients,” says Guy Burtschell, General Manager of Actiprint. “This ‘button’ tag is ideal for garment applications because of its small size, and it enables us to efficiently track items throughout the laundering process and accurately return personal garments to the correct residents.”

The ARIO 370L-HL’s innovative two-hole architecture quickly enables the tag to be sewn on garments either manually or automatically using most sewing machines without compromising its durability. Each ARIO 370L-HL is guaranteed to survive 200+ washing cycles to ensure durability and high performance throughout the life of the garment. Together with the ARIO 370L-DL, the ARIO 370L-HL are part of TAGSYS’ ISO 15693 encapsulated tag family — uniquely designed to withstand extreme humidity, temperature, pressure, and chemical applications. Measuring 15.5 mm in diameter at a thickness of 2.8 mm, the ARIO 370L-HL and ARIO 370L-DL can be used together to effectively track garments throughout the laundering cycle.

“The introduction of the ARIO 370L-HL is a perfect example of how RFID can benefit not only businesses, but individuals as well,” says Fred Kohout, TAGSYS Chief Marketing Officer. “Where RFID has typically been used to increase the efficiency of commercial operations, products such as the ARIO 370L-HL go a step further by delivering value-added services to the individual user as well.”

In addition to the encapsulated tag family, TAGSYS recently introduced a product portfolio designed to support the rigorous and rugged requirements found only in the textile supply and service markets:

Medio L400 Stations — Both the Medio L400 reader and textile services antenna series are designed for the rugged industrial applications found within processing plants. Each product is tested and tuned to accurately track various types of items, ranging from stacked linens to hanging uniforms. The Medio L400 delivers performance with processing speeds up to six times faster and 40% greater read ranges than earlier TAGSYS readers.
TS400 RFID Tunnel — The latest release of TAGSYS’ best-selling tunnel line, the TS400, seamlessly integrates RFID technology with existing factory automation equipment and processes. The TS400 can simultaneously read bulked or stacked items up to two times faster than the previous generation of tunnels, allowing operators to maintain traditional line speeds used in textile plants. Performance accuracy is achieved through a patented three dimensional antenna architecture that provides 99.90%+ accurate read rates.
e-connectware™ — TAGSYS’ ground-breaking software that manages global RFID networks. e-connectware remotely manages and optimizes RFID networks in real time, and delivers high-quality service levels to ensure data accuracy and integrity for tagged items.

HP Launches RFID Service for
Tracking Data Center Assets

jpg HP is introducing a new service that enables customers to reduce property loss, increase security, and improve audit controls in the data center with RFID technology. The HP Factory Express RFID Service tracks critical data center assets, such as HP factory-built servers, storage devices, and rack enclosures, so that customers can continuously monitor the equipment as soon as it is received at their facilities. When deployed as part of a full RFID solution from HP and its partners, the service automates and tracks device movement, providing an accurate inventory of all assets throughout their lifecycles.

HP offers customers a breadth of advanced RFID-related technology — such as tags, readers, middleware, and business applications — for tracking and tracing, inventory management, and security. The company also provides RFID consulting and integration services and is an active participant in global RFID standards development.

Data center asset management is becoming crucial to customers, particularly those with thousands of servers in multiple data centers across several geographies. Many data centers operate with manual inventory lists and have low inventory accuracy. With moves, adds, and changes, keeping track of technology devices can be complex.

“Just like it’s true with consumer packaged goods companies, it really is smart to tag at the source when the product is being manufactured,” says Frank Lanza, Worldwide RFID Director, Technology Solutions Group, HP. HP’s RFID tagging process allows technology devices to be scanned from the factory to the customer without requiring workers to manually inventory each asset. Customers can then quickly locate and maintain devices with minimal employee intervention, saving time and reducing loss or theft of valuable technology assets.

“What we’re doing is vendor-to-factory tagging,” says Lanza. “That is the piece of the solution that a lot of our customers said they would like. And HP is very familiar with that sort of work, considering that we do provide tagged products to large retailers. This is a little different because we’re not talking about pallet and case tagging — these are IT assets.”

The HP Factory Express RFID Service is available directly through HP or its channel partners in the U.S. and Canada, or as part of HP Factory Express, a broad portfolio of pre-priced, configured, and integrated factory solutions and deployment services. Over the next year, HP plans to extend the service to customers worldwide via HP Factory Express locations in Brazil, Singapore, and the UK.

There are two levels of service available. The HP RFID Factory Express Standard Service includes standard generation-two RFID tags affixed to specific HP products or packaging with a unique Electronic Product Code assignment and data tracking capabilities. The HP RFID Factory Express Custom Service allows for customized RFID tag placement and additional RFID services from HP that transmit RFID tracking information from the factory to the customer.

The service costs between $5 and $10 for each individual tag, which can be affixed to the outside of HP ProLiant and HP Integrity server systems, HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array products, HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Arrays, HP server enclosures and HP rack infrastructure. Additional RFID services and solutions from HP are available at an additional cost. More information on RFID at HP is available at www.hp.com/go/rfid.

RFID-Enabled Sponge Counting and Detection System

jpg ClearCount Medical Solutions announces that it has entered into an agreement with Cardinal Health to be the primary distributor of its patented SmartSponge™ RFID system to hospitals, surgery centers, and other healthcare distributors in the U.S. The system integrates the counting and detection of surgical sponges in patients. This is the first system cleared by the FDA that integrates both counting and detection.

The Gawande 2003 published study reports that one in every 1,000 to 1,500 intra-abdominal surgeries results in a sponge left behind in the patient. A retained sponge incident can lead to serious complications, including sepsis, unnecessary X-rays, need for repeat surgeries, and death.

In the SmartSponge™ system, the sponges are permanently embedded with passive RFID chips. Before use on a patient in surgery, they are counted with an RFID reader, and then again at the end to ensure that nothing is left behind, which is beneficial both to the patients medically and the hospitals and doctors legally.

Unlike manual counting or use of barcodes, neither over-handling of the sponges nor line-of-sight is necessary. A computer screen attached to a SmartBucket™ provides the “out” reconciliation report. If a discrepancy occurs, a SmartWand™ is used to scan the patient and quickly detect any sponge remaining in the patient. This provides the user with notification that a scan is proceeding properly, saving time, preventing unnecessary X-rays, reducing the possibility of user error, minimizing delay in procedures, and reducing the hassles associated with count discrepancies.

Cardinal Health will offer the SmartSponge™ system as part of its Presource® surgical kits and as a stand alone offering.

Wavetrend Case Study — Mining Personnel
Monitoring & Asset Tracking

jpg NLT Australia Pty Ltd (NLT), a subsidiary of NL Technologies, designs and manufactures underground lighting and communications solutions for the mining industry. NLT has leverages its mining expertise to design underground tracking and communications systems aimed at improving safety and efficiency and preventing mine emergencies.

Grasstree Mine (Grasstree) is an underground coking coal mine located in central Queensland, Australia, operated and managed by Anglo Coal Australia Pty Ltd (Anglo). As underground mines represent some of the harshest working environments, ensuring the safest conditions for its workers at Grasstree was of the utmost concern for Anglo. Communication and the location of personnel and equipment within the mine can be a difficult endeavor. Additionally, Anglo Coal expected to reduce costs and save time by being better able to locate personnel with specific skill sets when needed and keep track of equipment between shifts.

Anglo contracted NLT to design and install an underground digital communications network. NLT determined that Wavetrend’s active RFID products could provide the superior tracking precision and effective real-time monitoring critical to achieving Anglo’s objectives, and that Wavetrend’s active RFID product offering was rugged and reliable enough to withstand the rigors of the underground environment.

Wavetrend supplied the active RFID hardware that integrates into the communications infrastructure and provides the foundation for advanced tracking of people and assets within the mine.

Readers were installed at various locations throughout the length of the mine. When a tag enters the read range of the reader, data is transmitted to a wireless access point and then relayed via fiber to the control room. The operator monitoring the system has complete visibility of the movement of personnel and equipment throughout the mine, and via NLT’s two-way messaging function, can immediately alert workers in the event of an emergency. Furthermore, management can locate highly skilled workers and specialized tools and equipment and reassign them so that the mine operates at peak efficiency. The NLT Digital suite of software can be accessed anywhere on the network to obtain locations or send instant messages.

Another key component of the network is the Messenger Cap Lamp equipped with a Wavetrend active RFID tag. This innovative approach fosters real-time personnel tracking by seamlessly integrating the tag into the miners gear. Assets and vehicles are tracked in a similar fashion by affixing a tag directly to the item.

As the installation at Grasstree evolves, the system will incorporate add-on features, sensors that minimize many of the risks of underground mining, including the detection of many different gases and the monitoring of air flow in the mine, that fully integrate into the NLT digital network and software.

NLT’s underground digital communications network, supported by active RFID hardware from Wavetrend, has enhanced visibility of activity in the mine. The management of Grasstree now has access to data they can use to make split-second decisions and take immediate action. With the system in place, Anglo has achieved its goal of improved safety and experienced an increase in productivity as a result of the real-time information that active RFID provides.

ROI

Significantly upgraded two-way communications within the mine
Reduction in response times to emergency situations has dramatically improved overall safety
Real-time personnel monitoring and asset tracking has increased productivity as specialized staff and equipment can be quickly located and reassigned
Compliance with legislation necessitating two-way messaging and tracking