A Little QC Goes a Long Way

For all its hype during the past few years, RFID is still a technology trying to get its feet firmly planted in the packaging sector. That is not to say that package printers should sit back and wait to see where RFID is going. There’s no doubt it will entrench itself in the packaging market. The question is when will it happen?

According to an IDTechEx study, “RFID Forecasts, Players & Opportunities 2007-2017,” label and packaging converters continue to enter the RFID business to meet their customers’ demands. During 2007, IDTechEx expects that 1.71 billion tags will be sold, and that the total RFID market value across all countries will be $4.96 billion. Many converters with whom IDTechEx has spoken state they are supplying relatively small numbers of labels, but are able to quickly change designs as required by their customers.

Standardization has helped. “In the past four years, much needed standardization has been occurring,” says Max Golter, vice president of sales, bielomatik. “Additional standardization is needed globally in order for the technology to work efficiently.” Other factors helping the RFID market include increased quality of UHF transponders and reduced costs which helps open RFID to other areas where smart labels, tickets, or cards can be applied, according to Golter.

Improvements in quality control have also paid huge dividends at the converter level. Equipment suppliers continue to make advances in their own products to reduce waste involved with RFID tag placement by tightening placement tolerances. According to David Grove, technical sales specialist, Schober USA, “We are now seeing a less than 1 percent failure rate on new tags. That is much improved over a year ago.” Improved quality control creates less waste, which in turn, ends up saving converters money in the long run.

QC across the board

Ben Robesin, account manager, Stork Prints BV, comments, “The starting point of each antenna is the printing, [whether it’s] etching, plating, or direct printing. The right configuration of your printing equipment is very important.”

Michael Harris, CEO, Innovative Equipment, adds that while improvements in Gen 2 materials have been significant, there must be a quality control step to qualify what is ultimately produced and shipped to ensure 100 percent functionality, he explains. “While lower defect rates make placing inlays on every label, then doctoring out the defects, more palatable, the extra inspection step is still 100 percent necessary.” The cost savings here, he says, is the value of the base label substrate that ends up in the trash. “It is lower due to the reduced number of defective inlays doctored out,” he says.

Mark Davenport, president, Mid South Graphics, agrees, that equipment from RFID suppliers has improved. “Our base raw material suppliers have improved adhesives and release liners for our converting process, and our RFID inlay suppliers have greatly reduced the amount of defective chips that are being supplied to us.

Davenport also cites operator experience as one of the most important factors in increased quality control. “During the past two to three years, our quality control in our RFID department has improved three-fold. Our operators have become very experienced with the equipment they are running.” Although there have been numerous technology improvements specific to printing and processing of RFID labels, Davenport still attributes the successes of his company to operator experience with the various RFID applications the company produces. “MSG is not your typical run-of-the-mill RFID converter,” he says. “We run a lot of specialized RFID tags, and with that comes a lot of trial and error. The newer technology has helped us curve the errors that we have experienced in the past.”

Money saved

One goal of every converter is to reduce the amount of waste produced during a print run. In the case of RFID label printing, strap and chip placement is critical.

“The chip is the most expensive component on a smart label,” says Golter. “With UHF transponders costing approximately $0.08, the rest of the components used to complete the smart label—facestock, adhesive, and liner—along with the overhead and machine ROI add approximately another $0.08 to the label, based on a 4˝ x 6˝ label. When the smart label is defective, at today’s yields of 98 percent, the converter is faced with a loss of $0.32 per $15.68 of salable product.”

Davenport adds that when you set up a machine to run a tag that has never been made before, you are going to experience some technical difficulties. “We obviously do our best to determine the waste that we are going to experience prior to running a complex job,” he says. “Being that most of them are large runs, our waste can run anywhere from 3–15 percent, and that is quite a bit of money considering what an RFID tag costs a customer.”

Emerging applications demand quality control

Golter contends that the primary applications for smart labels are pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and library books. He also cites other emerging applications such as parts bins for automobile and airplane manufacturing facilities, and smart tickets/cards for sporting events.

Another up-and-coming area, according to Harris, is baggage tags. “Because of the complex diecutting nature of the labels and liner, it is impossible to inspect and remove defects from a roll of inlay-enabled labels after manufacturing,” he says. “They cannot be lifted and replaced, and these rolls are regulated by supply agreements to have consecutive good labels all the way through. The manufacturing process must have the ability to recognize and remove nonfunctioning inlays before they are integrated onto the baggage tag labels.” He cites the Melzer SL system that sorts through all bad inlays and removes them prior to the label attaching process, while ensuring that all labels receive an inlay.

A positive outlook

With new RFID applications realized almost daily, the future for this technology remains bright. “I truly believe that RFID has a very promising future in the packing industry, as well as the wealth of opportunities that it has created for the RFID converter market,” says Davenport. “The converters who continue to develop and improve their products and services will be greatly rewarded.”

“It is our opinion that the current high yields are in large part due to the capacity of the inlay supply exceeding the demand. The processing machinery for inlay production is running at 60–70 percent capacity, and in this mode, the reliability of the chip/strap bond is quite high,” says Harris. “However, once the predicted increases in demand begin to materialize for item-level and pharma usage, these machines will be pushed back into the 85–95 percent capacity range of production speed, and inlay failure rates will rise again, possibly dramatically in some cases.” What this means for converters is that they’ll have to take measures to reduce the number of bad labels printed by separating bad inlays before they are incorporated into the labels. So the future remains bright for RFID technology, but converters must be vigilant when it comes to the inlays they receive for their customers’ products. pP