Aviationtoday.com: Supply Chain Brain

As the global economy extends into once unthinkably remote regions, supply chains are becoming more attenuated. Aviation parts are moving at lightning speed from Xinjiang to Singapore to Seattle, and they need to be tracked with precision. To help solve the challenge, managers are embracing the new "supply chain brain" — Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags.

Propelled by mandates at major "Big Box" retailers and by initiatives at the U.S. Department of Defense, growing numbers of aviation companies are adopting RFID. This trend was examined at this year’s Avionics Maintenance Conference (AMC) and Airlines Electronic Engineering Committee (AEEC) meetings held March 30-April 2 in Minneapolis.

Organized by ARINC Industry Activities, the yearly meetings are designed to help set universal standards for avionics engineering and maintenance. Airline avionics engineers and policymakers at major OEMs dominated the attendance.

My colleague Bill Carey, editor-in-chief of this magazine, attended the collocated AMC and AEEC conferences and wrote a daily blog on the proceedings. His blog dispatches are archived at www.AviationToday.com.

In my own separate reporting on RFID, sources told me that getting the best and highest use of RFID — via real-time actionable information — requires interpretive analysis whereby users aren’t only seeing the information as it’s scanned, but they’re simultaneously putting it into historical context.

RFID is still undergoing a rocky transition from broad theoretical applications to real-world practicality. The technology offers enormous potential and benefits for the aviation industry, but it’s still surrounded by unrealistic expectations. The technology one day will live up to, and exceed, the hype. But a lot of hard work remains.

Greg Gilbert, product management director at the consulting firm Manhattan Associates, said RFID is, first and foremost, an enabling technology. "For any enabling technology, it’s very hard to prove the business case," he said. "Prove the business case for your laptop. You can’t. Prove the business case for your BlackBerry. You can’t. But it’s what you do with it afterwards that allows you to drive the business value. So you have to build on top of it and then figure what the value is beyond that."

Michael Crane, Cisco Systems Advanced Services senior director, said the companies that have successfully adopted RFID have been the ones with the "courage" to change their processes. "Everyone recognizes the value but then, depending on the strategic nature of what you’re trying to do, you’re looking at changing some significant processes to implement RFID, so it’s more than just ‘barcodes on steroids,’" he said.

Joseph Tobolski, Accenture senior director, suggested that RFID is not merely about reading sheer volumes of data. "Interpreting that data is important," he explained. He noted an RFID system must include sufficient middleware tools and applications to provide an analytical overlay, to make sense of the data in real time.

RFID does not produce just a stream of undifferentiated information, akin to water blasting out of a fire hose. RFID data must be up-to-the-second and actionable, a goal that requires computing capabilities of mind-boggling sophistication.

One big take-away from the RFID discussion at the AMC symposium in Minneapolis is that RFID is not a technical fix in response to mandates. It’s a way to add value to a company’s services and to its products and to the entire enterprise.

The Pentagon is exploring new technologies — including RFID — as part of its effort to shed anachronistic Cold War armaments. Unmanned aerial vehicles and a slate of 21st century weapons systems require sensors and wireless capabilities exemplified by RFID. These systems already are proving their worth in the harsh battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq and they’re enhancing the ability to maintain and repair aircraft in the hot, sandy climate of the Middle East.

For more on RFID, check out Bill Carey’s blog from AMC/AEEC on Aviation Today. Unlike, say, a spare part from Xinjiang, his insights are easily accessible.