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best practices
You’ve done a field trial that proved the ways that will ensure you can read the tags
business case for your use of radio frequen- on your products reliably, but not tags you
cy identification. You’ve selected the best don’t want read. The installation needs to
tags for your products and the right inter- meet safety standards and adhere to local
rogators (readers) for your facilities, fire and building codes. And you need to
designed the system and conducted a pilot. ensure the system will continue to function
Now it’s time to roll out the RFID system optimally and can be maintained properly.
Ready to install an RFID to your factories, distribution centers or A poorly planned rollout can easily dou-
system in your factories, retail stores. Where do you start? How do ble the cost of an installation. To help you
distribution centers or you ensure the rollout won’t disrupt the avoid mistakes, RFID JOURNAL spoke to
operation of the facilities and will be done vendors, systems integrators and end users
retail stores? Early
in the most cost-effective way possible? who have been involved in some of the
adopters have paved the It’s not easy, given all the complexities of largest rollouts of RFID portal systems so
way and share the lessons an RFID installation. You need to get far. The step-by-step guide that follows
power and Ethernet connections to the represents best practices based on the
they learned to help your
interrogators at all of the dock doors in methodologies these companies have
rollout go smoothly. each facility. You need to install antennas in established.
Plan an RFID Rollout By Mark Roberti
THAT STAYS ON TRACK
RFID Journal January/February 2007 1
1. Create a project plan. It should ment skills. He or she has to have the
include dates for pre-installation meetings, authority to make decisions, and a mix of
a list of the facilities that will be outfitted organizational and negotiating skills need-
with RFID interrogators, a schedule for ed to get all the parties to commit to a
when each facility will be done, a list of the schedule.”
corporate and local departments that will 3. Address large and small issues at pre-
be involved, a schedule for the purchase installation meetings. Communication is
and delivery of equipment, and a budget critical to the success of any big rollout.The
Plan an for the rollout. installation teams need to understand the
RFID Rollout Most companies typically use three dif- RFID application or applications, the busi-
THAT STAYS ferent outside contractors: one to install the ness processes involved, the hardware
ON TRACK electrical wiring and Ethernet cabling, a selected and the requirements that will be
second to install bollards to protect the placed on the system.
interrogators and antennas, and a third to Two big issues that will have an impact
install the RFID hardware. It’s important to on the rollout should be discussed up
coordinate the work of these different front: Do you need to read all the tags on
teams, so they aren’t working simultaneous- cases on a pallet, and does the system need
ly or the RFID team doesn’t arrive before to alert forklift truck drivers to potential
the electrical work has been completed. mistakes? Reading all the tags on all the
To make sure the project can be com- cases on a pallet being moved through a
pleted within the budget, it’s important to portal can be easy with RF-friendly prod-
share the budget with your hardware vendor ucts, such as paper towels, and nearly
impossible with products shipped in cans
or products that are mostly water. If all the
“I’ve seen some companies that have put case tags need to be read, the installation
and configuration will need to be done
in systems on some dock doors without with a greater level of precision.
planning for how the system might be Requiring alerts will also have a big
expanded in the future.” impact on the installation. In the pilot, you
might have used a horn to alert drivers
—Susan Flake, Symbol Technologies bringing the wrong pallet through a single
dock door. But if the installation has sever-
and systems integrator, if the hardware ven- al dock doors and drivers go through them
dor isn’t doing the installation, says Damon simultaneously, how will they know who
Bramble, general manager of the RFID triggered the horn? Similarly, if you used a
Solutions Center and head of services for light stack to alert the driver to a problem
Alien Technology. “You want the vendor to during the pilot, the position of the light
come back and present what can and can’t stack might not work at other dock doors
be done, given the budget you’ve set,” he or in other facilities, if the doors were
says. “You need to determine whether that designed differently or additional equip-
meets the project requirements before mov- ment was installed around the doors.
ing ahead with the rollout.” At the planning meetings, be sure to
2. Appoint a strong project manager. discuss the future of the system. “I’ve seen
Given the number of parties involved in some companies that have put in systems
the installation, you need a strong project on some dock doors without planning for
manager with the authority to make deci- how the system might be expanded in the
sions. “It doesn’t have to be someone with future,” says Susan Flake, RFID systems
huge RFID experience,” says Bramble. engineering manager for Symbol
“Some RFID experience is important, but Technologies. “That can create problems
more important is having someone with when you go to install additional portal
strong organizational and project-manage- systems. You need to plan ahead and visu-
2 RFID Journal January/February 2007
best practices
alize potential problems that might arise.”
While you address the big issues, don’t “Readers should be preconfigured before they
overlook the smaller ones. Among the
questions that the installation teams should arrive at the installation facility,” says Patrick
ask at these meetings are: When will we
have access to the facilities? What will be Sweeney, CEO of ODIN Technologies.
going on in the facilities when we’re there?
Has security been alerted that we’ll be
there working? What kind of documenta-
tion about each installation is required?
Create a checklist of issues that might
arise during the installation so they can be
addressed early. The checklist can be
started at the installation meeting and
expanded as the installers come across
unanticipated problems during the project
(see “A Checklist for RFID Rollouts” on
page 15).
4. Include the managers of the local
facilities in the planning process. When
the head office plans a rollout, corporate
managers sometimes fail to inform the
managers of the local facilities about what
will be done and when, which causes
problems. Corporate managers might not
understand exactly how a facility is run The RF site survey is done with an RF
and why something isn’t possible. spectrum analyzer, a device that can meas-
“The key for a large-scale rollout is to ure RF energy in a wide frequency range
get the local folks involved in planning (from 3 Hz to 50 GHz in some cases).
the implementation,” says John Aclaro, Spectrum analyzers cost from $15,000 to
CEO of Systems Solution Co. (SSC), a more than $50,000, so you might want to
technical services company. “You might hire a systems integrator to perform your
have several different local people RF site survey, even if you plan to do the
involved—the facility manager, the elec- rest of the installation yourself. You can
trical department, the telecommunica- set the level of energy you wish to detect.
tions department, safety engineers, even If the spectrum analysis identifies a source
security. You need to coordinate with all of of noise that could impact the perform-
them so everyone knows what’s going on ance of the RFID system, you will need to
at all times.” use metal shielding around the source or
5. Do an RF site survey for each loca- reexamine where you intended to install
tion. The rollout to individual locations the interrogators.
starts with an RF site survey of each facil- Patrick Sweeney, CEO of ODIN
ity. There could be RF equipment used in Technologies, a systems integrator, recom-
the facility that will either interfere with mends that you do a 24-hour analysis of
the RFID system or, more likely, that the the RF energy in a facility, because sources
RFID system will interfere with. Motors, of ambient noise could change during the
high-voltage electrical boxes and even course of a day. Generators, security infra-
some fluorescent light ballasts give off structure and other systems might come
electromagnetic energy, or “noise,” which on during the evening and interfere with
could interfere with the ability to read the RFID systems. It’s even possible for
RFID tags. RF energy from adjacent buildings to
RFID Journal January/February 2007 3
best practices
affect your RFID system. photos of each dock door, place them in
Symbol’s Flake says it’s important to PowerPoint slides, and draw lines to indi-
take inventory of all wireless devices used in cate the height and width of each door, the
the facility, including wireless LAN access distance between doors and so on. This will
points, handheld terminals, cordless and allow you to see any equipment that might
mobile phones, pagers and walkie-talkies. be installed around the door. And it’s an
Keep this information in a database, along easy way to show your hardware vendor,
with the frequencies each device uses. operations manager or anyone else an issue
Plan an Installers should indicate what problems, if that might complicate the installation. “You
RFID Rollout any, these devices caused and how they can even draw in where you intend to
THAT STAYS were dealt with, so other teams can tap into install the reader, the antennas, where the
ON TRACK the database when they encounter issues wiring will go and so on,” McCollum says.
with these devices. Simon Langford, director of RFID and
During the site survey, determine where transportation systems for Wal-Mart
interrogators and antennas will most likely Stores, recommends that you over-
be placed. You can put antennas on tripods engineer the system to build in redundan-
temporarily and determine the right loca- cies. Wal-Mart installs an interrogator on
tion. Some companies will map the read each side of a dock door; that way, if one
field with a spectrum analyzer or with soft- goes down, there is still another in place to
ware that gets data from an RF probe. read products. He also suggests that during
Flake also draws a 1-by-1-foot grid in front the site survey companies consider what
of the portal, then moves actual tagged RF equipment might be installed in the
product at various heights from square to future. “Your facilities are always going to
square to determine where the edges of the change,” he says, “and you need to take that
into consideration.”
6. Do a facility survey for each loca-
“You need to look at every read point and tion. After the RF site survey, do a site sur-
vey with the local manager of the facility
determine which points go first, defining and the people who will install the electri-
the reasons why portal A should be cal lines and Ethernet cable. Don’t rely on
installed before portal B.” architectural drawings of the buildings.
“We had cases where people used draw-
—Joe Leone, RFID Global Solutions ings to estimate the length of conduit
needed for the electrical lines,” says Paul
interrogation zone are. “We record the Lester, an SSC project manager. “There
results in a corresponding grid in a spread- was no way to account for air-conditioning
sheet,” she says. “This gives you a real- units and other equipment that had been
world view of the interrogation zone.” installed, or new doors created, since the
Once the locations of the interrogators drawings were made. As a result of having
and antennas have been determined, look at to go around these obstacles, we wound up
each dock door individually to see if there is with about half the conduit we needed in
anything that could interfere with the place- some facilities.”
ment of antennas. Duncan McCollum, a The local managers will be better than
principal focused on auto-identification the RFID team at determining the best way
technologies in the supply-chain practice at to install the infrastructure for the RFID
Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), says you system. Walking through the building with
should note anything that might cause a the facility manager, electrician and other
problem at each dock door, even ones not local staff can guarantee that everyone is on
being outfitted today, because the rollout will the same page and minimize mistakes.
likely expand over time. “You can tell them how you think it
McCollum suggests that you take digital should be done,” says Lester, “but they’re
4 RFID Journal January/February 2007
the ones who know best. In one case, we where the forklift truck would clamp the
expected to tap into an electrical panel, and first pallet and then push three or four pal-
it turned out to be a 480-amp, high-voltage lets onto a truck,” he says. “We weren’t ini-
panel. You can’t run an RFID reader off of tially told they were using clamp trucks.
480 volts; it smokes a bit.” The first pallet is enclosed by metal, so
Power can be a particularly tricky prob- how do you read that one? You can’t use a
lem, says CSC’s McCollum. “I’ve experi- standard portal. We had to mount the
enced installations where the dock door area antennas above the dock door and point
Plan an becomes the compliance center, and when the antennas down.”
RFID Rollout you install the reader it works fine,” he says. It’s important to understand the busi-
THAT STAYS “But when you hook up a printer-encoder, it ness processes that will be affected by the
ON TRACK trips the circuit breaker when you print a RFID system and make certain that equip-
tag. Make sure the power is adequate for ment will be placed in the least intrusive
what you put on the circuit.” locations. For instance, you might want to
New wiring has to meet local electrical place interrogators farther from the dock
and construction codes, so consult local pro- door to allow time for the system to check
fessionals who know the codes. You might the information from a tag and respond
even want to bring in the local fire marshal with a visual or audible cue to the forklift
before starting the installation, to ensure that truck driver. But that could interfere with
it meets fire regulations. the operation of the forklift trucks or be a
7. Do an operational site survey for safety hazard.
each location. RFID systems are going to While you’re doing the operational sur-
affect and be affected by activities within vey, reexamine assumptions made during
the facility. Ask people how they do their the systems design phase of the project.
jobs, and also watch them in action over a You may find there are better, more cost-
period of time, says Toby Rush, president effective ways to do the rollout. “We’ve
of Rush Tracking System, a systems inte- seen installations where the company out-
gration company. “We did one installation fitted 10 or 15 dock doors that feed into a
single choke point,” says Joe Leone, presi-
dent and CTO of RFID Global Solutions,
Monitor the RFID system to see how it performs a systems integration company. “They
could have saved a lot of money by
over a period of weeks or even months. If read installing one portal system at that point.”
8. Create a detailed rollout plan for
rates are lower than expected, the antennas or each facility. Leone recommends using a
other factors may need to be adjusted. blueprint of the facility to help create a
detailed document that spells out precisely
where portal interrogators will be placed,
where power lines will be run, where
Ethernet cable will be installed, what type
of cable will be used, how many holes will
need to be drilled and whether special jigs
will be needed to drill the holes.
“You need to look at every read point
and determine which points go first, defin-
ing the reasons why portal A should be
installed before portal B,” Leone says. “You
need to consider all the things that have
been noted in the site survey, such as fire
system shutoff valves, lights, power
boxes—anything that could impede or
5 RFID Journal January/February 2007
best practices
impair the RFID system or which could be middleware either on a new edge server (a
impeded by the RFID system.” server at the edge of the enterprise net-
The rollout plan for each site should work) or on existing computers in the facil-
include a bill of materials that lists all the ity. And the RFID installation team should
items that will be shipped to the facility for make sure readers are certified by any regu-
the installation. “You don’t want to have latory agencies, if required, and test readers
engineers billing out at a couple of thou- to ensure they are functioning properly.
sand dollars a day sitting around for two “We’re finding there is a 15 to 18 per-
days while a $10 connector is being sent by cent failure rate in readers,” says Sweeney.
courier because someone forgot to include “Sometimes one antenna port isn’t giving
it in the shipment,” says ODIN’s Sweeney. out any signal, or you might have readers
9. Review the rollout plan. Before any that aren’t emitting a full watt of power.
work is actually done at the facility, walk
through the rollout plan with the local
managers of the facility and the corporate A CHECKLIST FOR RFID ROLLOUTS
RFID project team. CSC’s McCollum will
use the photos he took and even bring the Create a checklist of possible issues that could complicate the installa-
equipment that will be installed for every- tion process, and review it as you go through a facility doing the RF, facil-
one to see. “If they can touch, see and feel ity and operational site surveys. Here are some of the issues that could be
a reader, antenna cabling and so on,” he on your list.
says, “it improves your chance of success,
K When will you have access to the building to do the installation?
and it costs nothing.” K Will the project disrupt operations and, therefore, need to be done at
McCollum mounts antennas on tripods night, when the facility isn’t running?
temporarily to show the local managers the K If the installation will be done at night, is there a representative on-site
heights and positions in which the units will who can watch the implementation?
be installed. That way, the managers can K Are there any union rules that could affect the installation?
raise red flags if the position would interfere K Are you allowed to take photographs within the facility?
with work, breach a safety code or cause K Do you need permission to bring laptops, cell phones, test equipment
some other problem. It’s cheaper and better or other devices on premises?
to address these issues before the equipment K Do workers need to wear any safety glasses or clothing?
is installed. The cross-functional team over- K Are there areas within the building with excessive water or metal that
seeing the rollout might also have insights will interfere with the RFID system?
K Are there any reflective materials around the dock doors?
into problems with the plan or be able to
K Is the installation exposed to the weather?
suggest ways the plan can be improved. K Are there motors, lights, heating and ventilation equipment or RF
10. Install the infrastructure to sup- devices that will interfere with the RFID system?
port the portal system first, and pre- K Is there a radio station or other facility close by that could affect the
configure the RFID equipment. You implementation?
could install the portal interrogators and K Is there enough power in the building to power the interrogators?
then run power and Ethernet to them, but K Are there feeder boxes available for running power lines to power the
Wal-Mart’s Langford says it’s best to do it interrogators?
the other way around. “It’s vital that we K Is there Internet connectivity in the building?
have the power and Ethernet installed K If you are using Ethernet cables, are there LAN access boxes within
first,” he says. “That way, we can install a the 300-foot limit required for LAN connections?
reader, make the connections, test it and go K Is there a wireless LAN in the facility? If so, is it an older 900-MHz
system or a newer 2.4-GHz system?
on to the next door. Otherwise, we have to
K Are there any explosive or hazardous materials in the building that
revisit the facility to test the readers, which would require special equipment and protection of wiring?
adds to the [deployment] cost.” K Is there lead paint, asbestos or other material that might need to be
At the same time that crews are dealt with?
installing power and Ethernet cables, as K Does the planned implementation meet fire, building and safety
well as any bollards to protect the equip- codes?
ment, the IT department should install
RFID Journal January/February 2007 6
best practices
There’s no way to tell if a port is dead when all the portals are on,” he says. “If
unless you test it.” your goal is to read all the tags on cases
In addition, readers should also be pre- stacked on a pallet going through a portal,
configured before they arrive at the instal- you need to do that test when all the por-
lation facility. Sweeney says his team will tals are on, and if you don’t get 100 percent
identify which readers will go in which of the case tags, you need to do some
locations, test them, assign them IP things to optimize performance across all
addresses and configure the reader set- of the docks.”
Plan an tings—such as communication rates— Monitor the system to see how it per-
RFID Rollout based on the site surveys. ODIN does this forms over a period of weeks or even
THAT STAYS at its facilities in Virginia, but it can also be months. If read rates are lower than the tar-
ON TRACK done in an empty area of a warehouse or get set at the start of the project, the RFID
even a rented facility near where the instal- installation team might need to adjust the
lation will take place. antenna output levels, positions of the
11. Install the RFID hardware, bring antennas or other factors to improve the sys-
the system online and optimize the inter- tem performance. This process usually takes
rogators. Once all the power lines and longer when you need to read a wide variety
Ethernet cables have been installed, you of tagged products, because it takes time to
can deploy the interrogators and antennas gather enough data to analyze which prod-
quickly and efficiently. The harder part is ucts are most difficult to read.
bringing them online and testing them. 12. Ensure the system can be properly
Leone says his team brings up each portal maintained. Companies need to imple-
system individually and tests it. The team ment a monitoring and maintenance pro-
uses tools it developed to isolate and test gram that lets local personnel know when
the hardware and then isolate and test the an interrogator or system is down. If RFID
software to ensure the system is perform- networks are set up in remote geographical
ing correctly. “You want to make sure you areas, central monitoring will be important.
are testing hardware with good software, Training local technicians is also criti-
and software with good hardware,” he says. cal. RFID installation teams should leave
“Otherwise it’s hard to know where the behind simple documentation that enables
problem lies.” facility workers to maintain the RFID sys-
Once the system is up and running, it tem. The documentation should explain
needs to be optimized and tested. Several such basics as how to reboot an interroga-
systems integrators and hardware vendors tor, how to swap out an interrogator or
have developed tools to make the process of antenna if one goes down and who to call
optimization more scientific and repeatable, if something happens that the local team
which helps to lower the cost of deployment. can’t fix.
Alien’s Bramble says a validation test If you follow all these practices, you
needs to be done under real-world condi- should have a smooth rollout. But it’s
tions. “Just doing a performance test on important to maintain databases of inter-
one portal doesn’t tell you what happens rogator configurations and lessons learned
during each installation. This will give the
RFID installation teams a resource they
WEB EXTRA can go to when they come across problems
in new facilities and give the IT depart-
There are no best practices for where to place ment the information they need to main-
RFID interrogator antennas around portals—and tain the RFID interrogators. The goal of
how to set them up—because each installation is
your RFID installation is not just getting
different. But you can find some tips from the
the equipment in place cost-effectively, but
pros online at
www.rfidjournal.net/webextra/antenna.htm also making sure it delivers valuable RFID
data for years to come.
7 RFID Journal January/February 2007
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