Department of Information Technology (DIT) Projects A project has been initiated at CDAC Noida and IIT Kanpur for

joint development of one pilot application using RFID technology As a part of this project, preliminary work on setting up of a state of the art RFID lab in the country will be progressed with an objective to make this lab as the 8 th Auto ID Lab in the world Future Collaborations A common area has been identified for collaborative Research with the European Union (EU). RFID is one such mentioned area India and Japan have constituted an ICT Forum comprising of top companies, academia and government officials from both India and Japan. Areas of cooperation identified are Broadband Connectivity, Mobile Communication, E-Governance, Information Security, R&D and Ubiquitous Computing and Ubiquitous Network Technology

RFID Applications in India Department of Road Transport and Highways Project The Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Government of India, T.R. Baalu launched a pilot project for radio frequency identification (RFID)-based vehicle tracking project [3] on the Delhi-Jaipur highway of India Under the project, 68 buses of Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation (RSRTC) plying on the highway have been fitted with RFID tags and readers have been placed to track the vehicle movement along the highway, whereby their movement is being tracked, monitored and managed Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) Project The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) of Indian Railways plans to use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to improve the wagon management system of the Railways. CRIS proposes to have a RFID tag or chip embedded in all the wagons and provide sheds with hand-held devices that would read these chips and thus register the data

RFID Applications in India Wipros RFID solutions for Manufacturing

Project Wipros Manufacturing Solutions Center of Excellence (CoE) has a dedicated team of consultants who help customers define, analyze, design and implement RFID solutions. Amongst others, their RFID solutions include a Wireless Yard Management System for a large automobile manufacturer and a Real-Time WIP Tracking System for an electronic component product manufacturer Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro, announced the launch of its RFID-enabled (radio frequency identification) concept store at its campus. The store demonstrates automation of retail transactions through the implementation of RFID technologies Infosys and RFID Project Infosys Technologies (NASDAQ: INFY) today announced that it has successfully implemented SAP solutions for RFID for CHEPs Global Track and Trace System. CHEP, the global leader in pallet and container pooling services, expects to use this system to provide real-time visibility to its customers for their products as well as for tracking assets on which these products are shipped

RFID Applications in India Apparrel Tracking Using RFID -Pantaloons Pantaloon Retail (India) has piloted an RFID project at one its warehouses in Tarapur using 1,000 RFID tags. The company is starting from where it matters the most by implementing the technology at the warehouse RFID in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Ranbaxy), a wholly owned subsidiary of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, Indias largest pharmaceutical company, has chosen Acsis to implement a radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking system to meet Wal-Marts RFID mandate for its Class 2 pharmaceutical suppliers Animal Tracking The Kopordem farm at Valpoi in Sattari Taluk in North Goa has become the first farm in India to use RFID microchips that can be injected into the animal's body. While 50 cows from the farm have been injected with the RFID capsule under a pilot project for the state government's Animal Husbandry Department, the device will be implanted into 500 more cows at different state government farms soon Ticketing More recently, NXP Semiconductors, Smartag and Gemini Traze have collaborated to implement a hands-free RFID ticketing solution for a sporting event

http://rfidtechnews.wordpress.com/category/rfid-in-india/ http://www.nrsindia.com/

RFID at India Inc. Though RFID has an advantage over plain vanilla bar-coding in logistics, it will take a while for it to become mainstream. Megha Banduni reports Gartner states that RFID adoption continues to gather momentum and spending on related hardware and software is expected to amount to $504 million for 2005, up 39 percent from 2004, growing to $751 million in 2006 and topping $3 billion by 2010. That said, Gartner does not see the technology as a replacement for bar-coding. Rather, it expects growth in RFID to be driven by sectors outside the retail industry. In many cases, RFID will be used in areas where processes are not controlled by business applications. Though RFID has been around for several decades, its acceptance has been slow. Reasons such as cost, infrastructure, lack of standards and readability issues have combined to hinder its progress. Take the case of the Indian logistics sector. You may think that RFID will have a major presence here. But, bar-coding wins the fight hands down. Where RFID comes short While RFID-enabled supply chain or part of it can prove beneficial, the cost of tags and scanners remains prohibitive. Srikanth Palem, CEO and MD, Foursoft believes that RFID will provide better visibility to the movement of shipments, asset tracking (trucks, containers and so on), improve track and trace capabilities and reduce or eliminate processes related to manual scanning and shipment errors. The biggest hurdle is cost. Further it depends on the manufacturer or the supplier deploying the technology. There are no widely accepted standards, especially in terms of middleware to drive costs down and trigger broader uptake. Nobody wants to take the initiative to be the first and implement the technology to end up at a cost disadvantage, even if it is for the short term. Moreover, back-end systems have to analyse the data and help in decision-making, says Palem. The technology is evolving and so are standards and systems supporting it. As the technology gains acceptance, adopters will face the daunting task of gathering and managing massive amounts of data. Organisations that have already built data warehouses and mined the same using BI tools will be at an advantage.

Says Shirish Gariba, CIO, Elbee Express, If we were to have a tag per package then the multiplier effect will be huge because we ship large volumes of packages every year. Our ticket size (per item realisation) is small. Another problem is with regard to errors in reading tags. Case studies have shown that RFID scanners successfully read tags 85 to 90 percent of the time. The industry needs to freeze on standards which customers can adopt; the infrastructure that is available is not capable of reading tags in transit. Training, education, exposure and research is required within an organisation and business process needs to be changed. It may not benefit the end customer immediately. RFID in retail and manufacturing Company RFID application Goal To improve the efficiency of its supply chain and introduce item-level tagging for identification along with RFID hardware

Benefits Time saved in scanning items is 80% Real time visibility of items at all the stages of SC up by 98% Improved accuracy

Pantaloon Pilot at its Tarapur warehouse with 1,000 tags. Application developed by Wipro Infotech is integrated with the Oracle 10g database and middleware Tags Madura Garments garments going to its central warehouse

Will implement RFID at the retail showroom as a proof of concept Processing engine information more efficiently

Increased sales Better labour utilisation Easy stock taking Productivity enhanced Automated process Cost reduction Enhanced error-proofing

Ashok Leyland

Pilot project with HP at its production development area. RFID is being used in the enginetesting area

RFID vs bar-coding

Meanwhile, bar codes are more popular than ever. The technology works well for collecting data in structured environments, such as warehouses, and it is likely to continue for the next five to seven years. However, Gartner reports that companies are beginning to discover business value in places where they cannot use bar-coding, and this is expected to lead to the first wave of RFID adoption. As the first success stories percolate, broader support will emerge across sectors, not just in consumer goods and retail. This will become evident in 2006 and 2007. Advantage RFID

Fewer errors Improved track and trace capability Greater efficiency A better customer interface Faster information dissemination to the customer

Both will co-exist Since bar-coding is inexpensive and effective for certain tasks, it is likely that RFID and bar codes will co-exist for some time. RFID is expensive and deploying it is not hassle-free. Despite that, if the prices of tags drop and standards are agreed uponRFID will catch on fast. Palem thinks that RFID scores over bar codes because it doesnt require human intervention and more information can be loaded on to an RFID tag. Also, readability of bar codes can be impaired by dirt, moisture, abrasion or packaging contours. RFID tags are not affected by these conditions. Gariba believes that though RFID has advantage over bar codes, it cannot replace the latter. The two technologies have different applications, which sometimes overlap, he explains.

http://www.logisticsit.com/rfid-technology.asp