The Hindu Business Line : Safe food on your plate...

Any mention of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is likely to make one think of retail players deploying the technology to make the supply chain more efficient.

But new application areas have opened up for RFID.

Dilip Dhanuka, Vice-President and Head, Products and Technology Group, Patni, tells eWorld that Patni's RFID team engaged `Romeo and Juliet' devices to track livestock. Excerpts from a chat.

How big is the RFID market and how is Patni targeting it?

In 2004, the RFID market was $1.49 billion and it is expected to reach $6 billion by 2007. Through automatic identification, RFID opens the doors to a gamut of applications. Patni's SmartVISION for RFID adoption offers solutions in verticals such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, retail, aerospace and defence, healthcare, product engineering and software vendor solutions.

Our customers leverage our product to gauge the impact of RFID, measure returns, evaluate the technology and deploy it in an end-to-end manner. We also partner with organisations looking to deploy radio frequency identification.

Our team provides solutions not only on RFID, but also on converging it with other applications areas such as sensors and mobility, which we believe will be the future.

On the application of RFID in the context of mad cow disease...

The outbreak of mad cow and foot and mouth diseases have cost the US and Europe livestock industry billions of dollars. India too was hit by the recent outbreak of avian influenza. To provide reassurance on the safety of human food, the unique identification of all animals intended for human consumption has become very important. Patni has developed an RFID-based solution for the traceability of meat from the farm to the plate. This solution was used successfully during the mad cow scare in the US.

First of all, all animals in a farm were tagged with unique electronic-IDs, which served as the unique identification purpose.

There is a hand-held device (Romeo), which can be used by the farmer to capture the animal data in his farm. Using the Radio Frequency `read' feature of the hand-held device, one can read the electronic-tag of a particular animal and can register data for that animal - such as date of birth, breed specifics, health records, treatment modes, etc. At regular intervals, the hand-held device is docked on another desktop device (Juliet) for data synchronisation. All new/modified data from Romeo is transferred to Juliet, and Juliet will synchronise its data with a central server. The central server consists of animal data from all farms across the country. Thus, from any part of the country one can view animal data on the central server.

When animals move from one farm to another, or from farm to abattoir, data such as the date of movement, vehicle-information carrying this animal batch, etc, is recorded. At the abattoir, the RFID is converted to barcode identification and put on the meat package, providing complete traceability of the meat from the farm to the plate.

RFID experts suggest a solution that can allow the health department to monitor the health of the flock and the flow of products from any part of the country. Health officials can get alerts in real time, allowing for tracking of all meat, from the livestock stage to the final frozen food stage, and can trace irregularities at any point of time.

Traceability has a host of applications. Where do you see it being deployed?

Based on the costs, standards, and technology maturity, RFID can deliver quick, reasonable return on investment (ROI) mainly in closed-loop applications, such as manufacturing process control, especially for configurable, high-value products such as automobile engines and bodies and parts, and mobile asset management for assets such as trailers, containers, pallets, and trolleys. It can also be used in security and access control and distribution management of high-value items.

As standards evolve and the technology matures, RFID will start playing a key role in open-loop applications too, in helping reduce costs and increasing efficiencies. These include the complete distribution chain, right from the manufacturing warehouse to the retail shelf. And in counterfeit prevention, by creating a trail of product movement history with defined and recorded handovers.

Currently, RFID is in the news due to mandates from Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Metro, Tesco, from the retail sector; which talks of using the technology to optimise its supply chain operations.

But the use of RFID is not limited to supply chain operations. There are a number of already implemented or ongoing initiatives spanning railways, libraries, pharmaceuticals, toll-booths, healthcare, animal tracking, airports, schools, etc. The list is quite exhaustive.

As RFID continues to evolve...

RFID is an evolving domain. Hardware quality is bound to undergo improvisation and the cost of tags and readers is likely to come down over a period of time. In short, RFID hardware is going to get better and cheaper. Areas such as systems integration, process engineering and automation play a very crucial role in deploying RFID and are also very complex. Organisations should ensure that they provide equal attention to these areas as ultimately it is the `Systems' and `Processes' that are impacted by RFID application.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in