Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade uses UHF RFID to track assets
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The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) is responsible for maintaining diplomatic and consular relations with other countries, while promoting the development of international trade. DFAIT has 170 branches around the world. Before new employees move into the agency apartments, they must conduct an asset review on the apartments. For a long time, asset statistics have been performed manually. In order to improve the efficiency of statistics, it was decided to adopt the UHF RFID technology-based asset tracking solution provided by PiiComm.
DFAIT employees’ apartments have complete supporting facilities, not to mention electrical appliances, furniture and other daily necessities, including lawnmowers, generators and other tools. Institutional departments independently develop asset management solutions based on the SAP system, and use barcode scanning or paper to record furniture serial numbers to make statistics on the assets in the apartment.
Asset tracking through the above methods cannot effectively reduce the statistical time. For example, the staff needs to scan the barcodes attached to the furniture individually. The special position of some barcodes makes it difficult for the staff to operate; the damaged furniture should be recorded and the damage status should be recorded; the borrowing of the furniture inside the apartment will be held. Statistics of the number of influences.
In March 2011, DFAIT made a public tender to adopt PiiComm’s RFID-based asset solution. The solution is called AIDC and is used to process data read by RFID readers, which are stored in the SAP system.
In May of this year, DFAIT’s Los Angeles and Beijing branches began to pilot the solution, and then gradually expanded to Brasilia, Brazil, Paris, San Jose, Costa Rica and Berlin, Germany. The solution uses EPC Gen 2 passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID tags and Motorola MC3190-Z handheld reader. The items in the kitchen of the apartment, carpets, and pianos are all labeled, totaling about 130 items. Among them are washable labels for fabrics, ALN-9640 Squiggle labels with adhesive Alien Technology, and metal labels.
Before asset inspection, first connect the handheld reader to the computer where the database is installed, and the unique code of the tag is stored in the database. Load the data on the handheld device, and then read the tags in the room. The reading distance is generally controlled at about 30 feet (the reading distance of tags on metal objects will be closer). After reading the label, upload the data to the computer database. The Canadian headquarters has the authority to access data and conduct mining and analysis to provide effective data protection for risk analysis.
DFAIT has purchased 200 MC3190-Z readers and 200,000 UHF tags, and plans to purchase another 150,000 tags. RFID tags include Alien’s ALN-9640 Squiggle Higgs 3, Confidex’s Steelwave micro tags (for metal objects) and G2XM Confidex’s Steelwing tags (cloth). Six of the pilot projects will be completed in September, and the implementation of the technology will be summarized at that time. As far as the current situation is concerned, the ease of use of the program has been affirmed by the staff, and the efficiency of asset statistics has been greatly improved.
The benefits of the RFID asset tracking system will be better reflected in the next two years. Within two years of DFAIT’s plan, the system will cover 170 branches worldwide.
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