RFID Prevents Errors, Automates Movement of Heavy Machinery

Florida-based Linder Industrial Machinery has increased its efficiency with an active RFID-based system from GuardRFID that tracks the movement of its high-value, industrial equipment as it enters and leaves its storage yards. The company also can employ the RFID-based data to better manage the servicing of equipment as it is cleaned or maintained. Since the system was taken live at nine of its 19 locations, the company says it has been able to not only reduce its manual inventory tracking efforts, but also ensure that its high-value assets are never lost.

The AllGuard Yard Management solution was taken live in August 2017. Since then, the company reports, Linder Industrial Machinery has been better able to manage equipment leaving or returning to its yard, as well as move that equipment from one site to another. The system also enables it to track which customer has each particular item, and for how long.

Linder Industrial Machinery, founded in 1953, rents and sells equipment for use in residential and commercial applications, as well as highway construction, says Eric D. Strid, the firm's IT director. Its customers are located in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Its branch locations, which span the U.S. Southeast, store and maintain such equipment as milling machines, pavers, crushing and compacting products, demolition systems and scrap attachments for future use.

Managing inventory is an extensive and challenging task, the company reports, that was previously performed manually. Some of the equipment can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and flows in and out of the storage yards in sufficiently high volume that, in some cases, a piece may end up missing. Often, Strid says, six of seven trucks might be lined up at a storage yard to receive or deliver a specific piece of equipment, especially at the end of the month. As a result, items may occasionally be missed. The company, in fact, had to write off $70,000 worth of equipment annually, on average, which was sometimes redundant.

For instance, an accessory or piece of equipment may be received but not be formally checked into the system, meaning it might be onsite and available for rental to other customers, but the system would still not have a record of its return. Potentially more serious are instances when a piece of equipment leaves the storage yard and the company doesn't know where it is.

The GuardRFID system consists of active RFID tags, with a tag attached to each item. The equipment company, thus far, has purchased a total of approximately 1,800 tags for use on the nine sites. GuardRFID 433 MHz Solar Powered Tag Readers (SPTRs) are installed around the yard, with six such units, on average, deployed per site. There are also four Solar Powered Tag Exciters (SPTEs) at the gates to activate the tags via a 125 KHz transmission; the tags then beacon their own ID number, along with that of the exciter, to nearby readers. The response to the SPTE then indicates when a tagged piece of equipment has reached the gate and in what direction it is going (there is an exciter on each side of the gate for inbound and outbound transportation).

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T-Systems, Spearhead Partner to Add IoT to Car Insurance

T-Systems, a German provider of IT solutions and services, and Spearhead, a Zurich-based startup, have announced that they have reduced to just one minute the several days that insurers typically require to analyze the vehicular damage incurred during motor vehicle accidents. The entire claim process is then digitized, from accident notification to damage documentation, including valuations and repair orders.

Digital claims management for insurers is the core element of the Digital Drive solution, T-Systems' connected car offering. The solution can offer connection functionality to new and used vehicles without requiring internet access, the company reports.

An insured vehicle is connected to a diagnostic interface by means of a plug. When an accident occurs, the insurer will immediately receive a full analysis, via a portal. At the same time, the repair costs are calculated in real time and a repair order can then be issued. In addition, documents requested from the vehicle's owner can be provided via the application.

The plug is a device that is connected to a car's OBD2 interface, which connects that vehicles to the platform and the cloud infrastructure, and uses the CAN bus to collect its information. The device contains an acceleration sensor and a GPS sensor, and employs mobile connectivity (GPRS) to connect to the back end and transfer the collected information.

The device begins operating as soon as it is connected to the vehicle's on-board diagnostics (OBD2) interface, where it receives power to operate; the device also has a backup battery. The system requests the operator's vehicle identification number (VIN), as well as the car's speed, mileage, battery condition, fuel status and diagnostic codes. While the engine is running, the device sends the collected information to the back-end system, along with the GPS position, every few seconds. After the engine is unplugged, the device uses its internal sensors to check if the car has suffered a collision. It then transmits an hourly update.

The Digital Drive solution offers features for drivers, such as real-time information regarding vehicle status: fuel level, vehicle position and warnings in case of vibrations or towing. Insurers can use this data as a basis for calculating and rewarding the most careful drivers.

The solution is the result of a recently announced partnership between T-Systems and Spearhead, which entered the car insurance market in 2015. T-Systems provides the OBD2 adapter, while Spearhead supplies claims management software, the portal for insurers and the documentation of damage functionality for vehicle owners.

Ingo Hofacker, the head of Deutsche Telekom's Internet of Things (IoT) business, says the solution makes insurance telematics profitable for the mass market. "The combination of our car solution, coupled with Spearhead technology, makes it possible to deliver insurers a solution with a range of value-added services," Hofacker explains, "while, at the same time, reducing the costs involved in existing processes and repairs after accidents."

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Brazilian Hospital Improves Care for ICU Patients

Santa Casa de Valinhos maintains 102 active beds and carries out, on average, 450 surgeries, 800 hospitalizations and 10,000 emergency room visits per month. The hospital reports that it has implemented an Internet of Things (IoT) solution to quickly identify and locate the equipment in its intensive care unit.

The system employs Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons that emit signals to a control center. The initiative is the result of a partnership between Taggen RFID Solutions and Biocam Hospital Equipment.

Edson Manzano, the superintendent of Santa Casa de Valinhos, says the project originated with the need to update inventory, monitor displacements and locate devices. "The real-time tracking system hampers diversions and thefts, makes it easier to locate equipment for patient care, lowers maintenance costs and streamlines asset audits," Manzano says, adding that the current system replaces controls that previously were performed manually. "We were able to optimize our resources better." Among the equipment screened are cardiac monitors, infusion pumps and electrocardiograph machines.

The implementation of the IoT project allows the hospital to meet the current norm of annual inventory counts, as well as the maintenance of Brazil's National Accreditation Organization (ONA) certificate. This certification evaluates the quality of health services, Manzano says, in addition to establishing transparent management with continuous improvements.

With the system, equipment location data is integrated into the Genesis hospital asset-management system for analysis by IBM Watson. "The project involves an RTLS [real-time location system] for real-time location focused on controlling the movement of hospital equipment," says Mario Prado, Taggen's CTO.

"Previously, the process required frequent inventory counts," Prado explains. "Critical equipment to support the life of patients was often delayed. The system currently monitors the location of the equipment in real time." The solution uses beacons manufactured by Taggen RFID Solutions, which constantly transmit their location via Bluetooth signals, following Google's Eddystone beacon standards. "The benefits of this technology are the low cost of deployment and the ability to use a customer's existing IT infrastructure and provide cloud service."

Taggen's localization platform consists of three components. A cloud server provides an administrative interface, dashboards, reports and an application programming interface (API). Small reader modules (known as Taggen Gateways) are installed in the rooms to be monitored. "These modules communicate with the central server via a Wi-Fi network or the client's own wiring," Prado states. Finally, active tags (called Taggen Beacons) are detected by the readers. The system collects location and telemetry information, such as battery level, ambient temperature and so forth.

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CenTrak Builds BLE Beacon Functionality Into RTLS Devices

Enterprise location services company CenTrak has begun manufacturing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and embedding them into its sensor devices to provide its customers with wayfinding functionality that CenTrak supervises to monitor battery life and system status. The inclusion of BLE beacons into its devices, the company says, enables health-care facilities to provide wayfinding apps for visitors, while CenTrak will manage the beacons' status, battery life and functionality for the hospitals. The company also intends to offer its BLE beacons as standalone products for companies beyond the health-care market.

The BLE inclusion is part of the company's strategy to provide flexible Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for the health-care market, says Wil Lukens, CenTrak's chief commercial officer. With BLE, users can employ their own mobile devices, such as smartphones, to communicate with the CenTrak devices and link to the company's Enterprise Location Services Infrastructure software.

CenTrak already offers location solutions using Wi-Fi, active UHF RFID and Second Generation Infrared (Gen2IR). It enables not only the real-time location of employees, patients and assets, but also hand hygiene compliance solutions and the tracking of electronic health records, using a variety of technologies to provide location awareness. For instance, battery-powered 900 MHz RFID tags on products or wristbands can receive Gen2IR signals from transmitters to determine the room-level location, then transit their ID numbers and location information to RFID readers, which forward that data to the back-end system.

In recent years, a growing number of CenTrak's hospital customers have been either deploying BLE-based systems or planning such technology deployments, in order to help visitors navigate their large spaces. Often, people who visit hospitals are first-time guests, and finding their way around a busy facility is often challenging. That challenge is compounded if the hospital is large, as is the case for many of CenTrak's customers—some cover millions of square feet.

For that reason, the company reports, BLE has been a popular technology to provide an app-based solution. Users can download a hospital's app and then view their own location, based on beacon data captured from units installed around the facility, on a map of the hospital. They can then input their destination and be guided to a particular department or office.

Centrak's RTLS technology provides real-time clinical-grade location data for patients, staff members, equipment and visitors, Lukens explains, by pinpointing a tag worn by a person, or attached to an asset, with what he says is 100 percent certainty. BLE provides a way for users to gain much less granular data regarding their own location, using technology they already have on hand—their mobile phone or tablet.

Many larger hospitals are already using the Centrak solution for real-time location and have installed a separate BLE beacon network. However, Lukens says, that means higher installation costs, and the beacons come with some challenges. Because they rely on batteries to operate, and because they can be removed or damaged, it can be difficult to ensure that they are all in full operating condition without dispatching workers to physically check the beacons.

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Senior Bowl Runs With UWB RFID in Ball to Monitor Players' Performance

The post-season college football Senior Bowl is using radio frequency identification technology during practices, in order to understand player participation, exertion and movement as well as how practices and team strategies might be improved. The solution, provided this season by Zebra Technologies, includes active ultra-wideband (UWB) tags and readers, managed by Zebra software, to approximate the location, speed and direction of each player and the ball during both the game and practices. The collected data is then provided to fans via social media, and can also be accessed by the coaching staff and players.

The Senior Bowl, an annual all-star football game for graduating college athletes, is played at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, in Mobile, Ala. It includes about 100 players, whom the National Football League (NFL) invites as the best draft prospects of the year. The players are divided into two teams—north and south—and are coached by the coaching staffs of two NFL teams.

The organization is proactive when it comes to technology that could enhance the experience for coaches, players or fans, says Phil Savage, the Senior Bowl's executive director. "We feel technology is the wave of the future," he states, "so we consider ourselves an experimental testing ground."

Several NFL and college teams are already using Zebra's RFID technology to track players' performance (see The NFL RFID-Tags Its Footballs, The NFL's Next-Generation Statistics and What You Can Learn From the NFL). All NFL teams receive and have access to their own game-day tracking data via Zebra's relationship with the league as the Official Player Tracking Technology of the NFL. About one third of the league's teams use Zebra's Practice Solution at their local practice facilities. The Zebra Practice System is similar in design to the system deployed at all NFL stadiums. The Senior Bowl practices were held at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, the same place where the game later took place (on Jan. 27), and the RFID infrastructure to capture tag reads was thus able to collect data regarding both the practices and the game.

Players wore Zebra's UWB RFID tags—embedded between layers of plastic in their shoulder pads—each time they practiced together, explains John Pollard, the VP of business development at the company's Zebra Sports division. With tags built into footballs, the system can track such information as the rotation rate, height and velocity of the ball as it is kicked or thrown. That data was then paired with a particular kicker or quarterback.

To capture all the data, 22 Zebra UWB receivers were installed throughout the stadium. During practices and the game itself, the UWB tag of each player or football transmitted a signal multiple times per second in the 6.35 GHz and 6.75 GHz frequency bands. Zebra receivers read those signals from a distance of up to 325 feet. 

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New Checkpoint Antennas to Bring RFID to Wide-Open Store Entryways

As brick-and-mortar stores compete with online shopping trends, they are becoming more creative in building open, inviting entrances with eye-catching merchandise to capture the interest of passing shoppers. But that design poses challenges for electronic article surveillance (EAS) and radio frequency identification (RFID), which are designed to protect stores from shrinkage, as well as track inventory.

Retail loss-prevention and merchandise-visibility technology company Checkpoint Systems has released two new products that it says will provide improved EAS functionality. The new offerings employ UHF RFID tag reads to help retailers manage inventory and shrinkage, while accommodating attractive, wide-open entrances.

The NEO, Checkpoint's new EAS antenna platform, is designed to provide better detection of RFID tags and is commercially available now, the company reports. The UF-1 is what the firm calls the first RFID solution deployed under a store's floor; the antenna is presently undergoing piloting at retail locations throughout the world.

The two solutions are designed to meet the needs of retailers looking to offer wide entrances. Many stores want an open, inviting entrance with plenty of space for movement—in some case, entry points as much as 18 to 20 feet wide, which is too wide for many standard RFID reader antennas to reliably interrogate tags.

Additionally, as a way to compete against online sales, brick-and-mortar stores are also trending toward placing attractive products near entrances to draw in consumer traffic and hopefully make subsequent purchases. This model raises challenges when it comes to EAS and ensuring that unpurchased goods are protected from leaving the premises, yet still enabling them to be displayed near the doorway without setting off an alert unless they are actually moving through that exit.

"Our customers had been asking for a high-performance point-of-exit system that could be concealed," says Carl Rysdon, Checkpoint Systems' VP of inventory-control solutions. That meant something that could not only be sensitive and accommodate wide doorways, but would be only minimally visible. The NEO solution that resulted is aimed at high-end retailers seeking attractive entrances.

The NEO platform—built into Checkpoint's latest antennas—offers what the company calls a 35 percent increase in read range over predecessor RFID reader antennas, Rysdon says, so that retailers can increase the distance between each antenna to nearly 9 feet. Additionally, because of the readers' improved sensitivity, NEO solution users can expect to read even the small labels attached to goods at a high risk for theft, such as cosmetics products, either with the current aisle width setup or wider. During early testing, he recalls, the NEO-based antennas proved to have a 50 percent better detection rate of small tags, such as those on cosmetics, compared to standard RFID antennas.

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RFID Couples With Gaming Technology for 2D Mapping of Tagged Goods

A national retailer is testing StealthMatrix ARC, a new RFID-based solution from Stealth Network Communications, to access item-level location data via UHF RFID technology coupled with augmented reality.

StealthMatrix ARC (the acronym stands for Artificial Reality Computation) enables users to visually access the locations of RFID-tagged items on a 2D map, even as a user moves around a facility, following an arrow that directs him or her specifically to the item sought. The system provides a store- or warehouse-wide view into the locations of tagged items that management and other individuals, such as store associates, can employ to understand the location and status of their goods. 

The system consists of a cloud-base software platform and app that utilizes data from a business's RFID system to plot item-level location data on a facility-wide map. It also comes with a mobile device with a built-in RFID reader, as well as a camera-based sensor to detect a user's location when a given tag is read, as well as when a particular tagged item is being sought.

Stealth Network Communications was launched in 1994 to deliver voice, data, security network and wireless solutions to the commercial market and to government agencies. More recently, the firm began developing the solution for use in providing inventory management at stores and warehouses, as omnichannel sales require greater inventory visibility.

Commonly, traditional RFID in the retail market consists of fixed readers installed either at portals or overhead, which then read tags as inventory moves around a store. Conversely, staff members can utilize handheld readers to conduct inventory counts, and on Geiger counter mode to locate products.

There are shortcoming to both methods, however, says Margaret Nyswonger, Stealth Network Communications' president and CEO. A fixed RFID reader infrastructure for portals or store-wide real-time tracking is expensive, while simply using a handheld reader to capture tag reads does not automatically locate the interrogated tags and their products in specific places, nor does it provide visual 2D map location or wayfinding.

"At the end of the day," Nyswonger states, "if I have RFID-tagged inventory, I know I have it in my inventory or in the store," though that is not enough information for many businesses—especially those such as department stores, which contain large, complex merchandise offerings. Therefore, a store is still challenged to identify exactly where its tagged products are located, even if the RFID data from a handheld inventory count has determined those products to be on hand.

The StealthMatrix ARC solution is intended to make omnichannel order fulfillment faster and easy for sales associates, and to improve the customer experience for those who visit the store to shop. To accomplish this goal, the system leverages RFID data in conjunction with augmented reality software—the kind commonly used in online gaming—to help users navigate their way toward an RFID tag. "Now the retailer and the consumer are confident that what is on their e-commerce site and what is actually in store is accurate," Nyswonger explains. In addition to knowing the location, she says, "They have a visual snapshot of the item's location and can use the navigation feature to guide them to the individual merchandise." 

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Small Murata IoT Component Links BLE, NFC

Electronic components company Murata has released a fingernail-sized, low-power-consuming module for use in Internet of Things (IoT) devices that incorporates Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. The unit is designed for companies building IoT solutions for home or building automation, proximity services, health care or beacon-based systems.

Murata's miniaturized MBN52832 module measures 7.4 millimeters by 7 millimeters by 0.9 millimeter (0.29 inch by 0.27 inch by 0.04 inch). The component is designed to offer low power consumption and higher processor capabilities than its predecessors, the company reports, while including NFC and BLE functionalities.

Due to its small size and multiple data-transmission options, the module is a first for Murata, according to Yong Fang, the company's marketing manager. It features a Nordic ID-based BLE module, and may be the first product like it to be offered with Murata's high-volume manufacturing capabilities, he adds. The MBN52832 comes with a built-in ARM Cortex M4 core, with 64 kilobytes of RAM and 512 kilobytes of flash memory for data processing. It features an onboard BLE antenna and can accommodate an external NFC antenna.

Like many Murata products, Fang says, the new IoT component's development was customer-driven. Users of Murata products expressed a need for IoT-based components that offered the versatility of both BLE and NFC technologies. "This offers a good system for customers who want to build IoT solutions," he states. The Cortex M4 core, along with RAM and flash capability, make it a suitable basis for multiple solutions, the firm reports.

The device comes with a serial port; a port for temperature, humidity or light sensors; and the capacity for dimming or current control. "So from the designers' point of view," Fang states, "they can use it as a single component to add wireless functionality" and sensors.

The most common application for NFC, Fang says, is to enable users to put to sleep an IoT device built from the new Murata component, in order to conserve battery life. The device will typically be used without a power connection. For that reason, he adds, devices would rely solely on battery power, with the battery expected to last for one to three years.

"You would want to limit power consumption," Fang states. To put the module to sleep, a user would tap an NFC-enabled tag or a mobile phone against the device, thereby saving power as a result. For example, as someone were leaving or entering a building, he or she could tap the NFC device against the Murata-based technology and thus put it to sleep. The device can also go to sleep automatically at a preset time, and be woken up via an NFC reader tap. 

NFC could also help to establish a BLE connection more directly, by eliminating the need for a new user to input a passcode to access or share BLE-based data. Two immediate applications for the device, Fang says, will be the development of lighting-control devices, such as light bulbs or lighting-control switches.

The BLE functionality will enable a device with the MBN52832 unit to transmit or receive beacon transmissions to or from a user's smartphone, in order to create a long read range connection to the Internet via that phone. Conversely, Fang notes, users could set up their own BLE-based gateway using a Wi-Fi or cellular connection to send BLE-based data, including sensor measurements and the device's unique ID, to a server at predetermined intervals.

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Sports, Technology and the Future of Management

Because professional sports involve big money, competition is intense and that often leads organizations to innovate. In baseball, managers who run their teams the old-fashioned way—by gut instinct, based on years of experience—are being turfed out and replaced with younger managers who have almost no managerial experience, at least at the highest level. What they do have is a willingness to embrace data analytics.

In baseball, as in other sports, everything is measured. Fielders are being positioned based on historical information indicating where batters tend to hit the ball, for example. Some pitchers are removed after the fifth inning because statistics show that hitters do better against them the third time they face off during a game.

Some managers have resisted making changes based on the data. Older managers, such as Dusty Baker and John Farrell, have been replaced by younger managers who have less experience but are willing to base more decisions on what the data says they should do. Whether this is right or wrong is hard to say at this point, but I see an analogy between younger business managers willing to embrace new technologies, such as RFID and data analytics, and older managers who are more comfortable doing things the way they have always done them.

In business, bad decisions don't always produce bad results immediately, as they do in the sports world. So companies are often willing to continue doing things the way they've always done them, as long as sales are not declining. But not changing often means a slow and steady decline until things reach a point of no return.

We're seeing a lot of retailers hold on to the old way of doing things, even though it's not working well. Young people are more willing to buy online from Amazon than spend the time required to travel to a store, because they know that stores often don't have the items they want in stock. Rather than address that problem with new technologies, CEOs try new branding or new advertising.

When companies become desperate, and when it appears they might not survive, they finally begin to consider new technologies and new ways of doing things—but by that point, it may be too late. This is not a criticism. I know change is difficult. I've lived through a lot of changes in the publishing industry (we used typewriters when I started out), so I know. I am just describing how it is.

It's unfortunate that it takes a horrible losing season in sports for a team to change, and it's unfortunate that it takes several losing seasons in retail and other sectors before companies do so. On the other hand, it is exciting when a new generation with new ideas takes over—and, of course, it's great when experienced managers embrace change and bring both their experience and new technologies to bear, and lift an organization up.

I think there are a lot of new, young managers willing to embrace new technologies. Unfortunately, some companies will go under before those managers are afforded the opportunity to take over. Still, they will be part of a new group of businesses born with technology in their DNA, and they will do things with technologies in new ways and change retailing for the better. Of this I am certain, just as I am certain that the new crop of sports managers will change the nature of competition.

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General Motors, Boeing to Keynote at RFID Journal LIVE! 2018

RFID Journal announced today that speakers from General Motors (GM) and Boeing will be featured in general sessions at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2018 conference and exhibition. The event will be held on Apr. 10-12 at the Orange County Convention Center, located in Orlando, Fla. Both presentations will highlight the successful use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve business operations and increase efficiency in inventory management.

Lloyd Luettke, Robert Blankenburg and Ronald Mills will discuss how GM has transformed tool tracking via RFID. Thousands of parts are manufactured for every vehicle the company makes, using tens of thousands of vendor tools—which have been manually tracked by GM's more than 3,000 suppliers at their own production facilities. Each tool has a lifecycle of about 20 years. Managing this massive tooling database was an ominous task for both GM and its suppliers, but by using RFID and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technologies, the automotive giant has reduced its inventory-counting time from days or weeks down to hours or minutes—without the installation of extensive infrastructure.

John Yu will explain how Boeing is using RFID in-house for assembly management. The firm has deployed an RFID system for internal manufacturing purposes at four facilities since 2016. Before the system's deployment, the management of parts during assembly was a matter of performing visual checks and manually entering data to confirm where specific parts were located, and in which assembly they were used. They solution has reduced the amount of labor expended for employees to search for parts, as well as the incidence of errors.

Additional general sessions and keynotes will be finalized during the coming weeks. LIVE! 2018 will also feature four industry-specific and four technical conference tracks, as well as eight in-depth preconference seminars and workshops, presentations by the RFID Journal Awards finalists, fast-track training provided by RFID4U, two post-conference training sessions and the opportunity for attendees to take the RFID Professional Institute's certification exam. The event will be co-located with IEEE RFID 2018, the world's most important RFID technical event.

LIVE! 2018 will also feature the world's large RFID exhibition, with some 200 companies from around the globe exhibiting the latest RFID hardware, software and services. Many companies will be hosting live demonstrations in the exhibit hall. For more information, visit www.asiarfid.com.

To Visit Abroad and Bring New RFID Technology Information

From 2017, Shenzhen XinYeTong Technology Co.,Ltd company have visited abroad two big areas in the world, Southeast Asia, Dubai. 

When our sales arrive at every city,  almost all customers gave us biggest enthusiasm, as if that we are best friends. Actually, we feel pride of the partners and many thanks to them.

As we known, XinYeTong company, established in 2011, mainly provide all kind of smart card, RFID card, RFID tag, RFID wristband, etc. It still insists on providing high quality products and high level services. Thus, it has owned reputation among cooperation customers. Its business involves in more than 35 countries in the world. 

But from the year of 2017, XinYeTong have expended its business from RFID products to RFID System management Solution, smart school management, smart storage management, smart clothes management, smart library management, smart traffic management, smart door access management, etc. These RFID system solving solutions could involve in many application environments, such as hotel, traffic, school, factory, clothes shop, and so on.

Now, XinYeTong has enough engineers to make sure the process of system develop and data management, especially for RFID software and RFID read and write machine. So, once you have any question about RFID technology, XinYeTong can solve it as soon as possible. 

In the visiting, we help some customers to solve their questions, and they give us more local market information. However, it is far from the target. We still want to help more customers, and build a long cooperation relationship so that more value is given the customer and the society.

So, which cities are our next step?

The answer is South Africa, Europe, Brazil, Russia. 

So if you are our customers and the potential partners, XinYeTong would like to visit you face to face. And if you have the willing, please tell us. Of course, if you are not the customer from above country, we also welcome you. Because we may have the excess plan to visit you. Thank you.

Email, contact@asiarfid.com

Tel phone, 0086 75526979016

Website, www.asiarfid.com

Address, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Name, Shenzhen XinYeTong Technology Co.,Ltd

Business, RFID Products, RFID system management solution

Bluetooth Low Energy and Internet of Things Make House Calls

Doctor house-call company Heal is leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technology including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to help doctors automatically access—and receive alerts based on—health-care data collected from patients in their homes. This year, the company will use the device to improve services for some of its own patients, but it plans to commercialize the solution for other health-care providers, or patients' families, as well.

The Wellbe is a plug-in device that employs 4G connections to transmit data to Heal's server. It comes with Bluetooth and BLE functionality to capture sensor data from any of 122 commercially available health-tracking devices, including blood-pressure monitors, temperature and blood sugar sensors, and trackers that indicate where a person is located. In that way, doctors can obtain a real-time view into a patient's health, without requiring any input from the patient and without being present.

Heal has been providing doctor house calls since 2015, and has thus far made approximately 40,000 house calls in California, Northern Virginia and the Washington D.C. area. It now averages 7,500 patient visits per month. The company was launched by CEO Nick Desai and his wife Renee Dua, a physician who now serves as the firm's chief medical officer. Desai, a technology entrepreneur, says he and his wife brainstormed the Heal solution following a grueling visit to an emergency room for one of their children. After spending hours at the hospital, only to be told their child would be fine, they decided there must be a better way for physicians to provide health care.

To that end, the couple developed an app which allows patients to easily request a doctor. The physicians have their own application through which they receive visit requests from patients, view patient records and navigate to their home. Patients make their usual insurance copayment, or pay $99 if they lack insurance. Visits include sick- and well-child exams, as well as services for the elderly or chronically ill who require more regular service. For that latter category, Heal developed the Wellbe to open communication between patients and their doctors—even if the latter are not present.

The Wellbe has a built-in Qualcomm Life 4G device and is designed to require no effort to install or maintain. Heal physicians can simply visit a patient, plug the Wellbe into an outlet and synch it with health-care devices. Some simply transmit data via a Bluetooth connection, such as a blood-pressure monitor. The patient can go about his or her usual routine, manually taking blood-pressure measurements or wearing the blood-pressure device—which, in turn, then forwards the results to the Wellbe. The Wellbe, whose unique ID number is linked to the patient's identity, transmits that data to the Heal server, where its software links the measurement with the patient's records.

The information is made available to physicians in the electronic health records that they already use for Heal house call visits, rather than requiring them to visit another site to access the data. The integration with electronic medical records is key, Desai says. "That's the only place physicians will want to go," he explains, to collect patient health data.

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The Best Retail RFID Deployment

A reader recently submitted this question to our Ask the Experts forum: "In your opinion, what has been the best rollout of RFID in retail, and why?" It's a great question, deserving of a full and complete answer, so I am addressing it in my weekly column, rather than in an a more abbreviated response on the forum.

Companies have different goals for their RFID project and different approaches to the market, so it's not easy to compare retail deployments. If one retailer is a low-cost provider and uses RFID to cut costs, while another is a high-end retailer that uses RFID to enhance the customer experience, how can you say one deployment is better than the other if they both achieve what they set out to do?

That being said, I think it's worth talking about the deployment I admire most. That would be the one achieved by Marks & Spencer, a United Kingdom-based retail chain. There are a few things I admire about the way in which M&S went about its implementation of RFID:

1. Patience: M&S conducted a lot of research into the value of RFID for tracking apparel. The company launched its first apparel-tracking pilot back in 2003 (see EPC in Fashion at Marks & Spencer). It then expanded the pilot and worked with solution providers to improve passive UHF RFID systems, which were then in their infancy. As RFID developed and improved, the company kept looking at how the technology could deliver value.

2. Total discipline: M&S identified 23 areas of the business in which RFID could deliver value, but when presenting the business case to the board, senior executives focused on just one: improving on-shelf availability. The potential increase in revenue from having the right item in the proper place when a customer wanted to buy it would increase margins by reducing mark-downs. That alone would pay for the deployment. The additional use cases would be tackled only after the initial benefits were achieved.

3. No fear of being first: M&S didn't worry that they were the first major retailer to deploy RFID on all apparel and later all non-food items. Other companies seem to want to wait for others to do it, so that they won't be blasted by the press or financial analysts if the deployment doesn't succeed.

4. No fear of discussing the RFID project: M&S, like Macy's in the United States, has spoken frequently about its use of RFID. The company knows there is more value in going public about RFID than in keeping everything silent. For one thing, being open allows the RFID vendor community to understand what M&S is trying to do, and to deliver products that will enable it to achieve its goals (see Why Marks & Spencer Talks About RFID).

5. Continual innovation: M&S maintains "innovation stores" at which it tests new uses of RFID and other technologies, as well as new products, in order to determine whether or not they can deliver value across the chain. It sends executives to RFID events to learn about new products and new applications. Other companies seem to stop thinking how to use RFID after they solve their inventory accuracy problem.

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