Early Adopters in RFID Converting

FID has exploded through the critical mass point, with more and more companies getting involved. A few companies, though, have been producing RFID products for several years now. In the following Q&A, several of these companies describe their involvement over the years and some of their experiences.

pP: What is your company’s background?
Nancy Mitchell, national product manager, RFID, RR Donnelley—RR Donnelley is a full-service global print provider and the largest printing company in North America, serving customers in publishing, healthcare, advertising, retail, telecommunications, technology, financial services, and many other industries. Founded more than 140 years ago, the company provides solutions in commercial printing, forms and labels, direct mail, financial printing, print fulfillment, business communication outsourcing, logistics, online services, digital photography, color services, and content and database management. Some of the largest companies in the world and others rely on RR Donnelley’s scale, scope, and insight through a comprehensive range of online tools, variable printing services, and market-specific solutions.

Mark Davenport, president, Mid South Graphics—Mid South Graphics is a prime label company that was established in 1957.

Tom Hartmann, RFID manager, Topflight Corporation—Topflight Corporation was established in 1943 in York, Pa. Today, it is an independently held, ISO 9001:2000-certified company, with corporate headquarters in Glen Rock, Pa.

Topflight Corporation’s field of specialty is information and signal delivery. After years of developing various components and systems for production of RFID labels, the company is positioned to support most of the efforts in this market to meet various global mandates or special initiatives among different verticals. We currently staff four certified RFID experts, trained in the fundamentals, implementation, limitations, and programming of RFID systems. This was done to provide a strong RFID backbone in order to support the general efforts of companies we deal with who are involved in RFID.

Topflight began printing flex circuits in the 1970s and with that came printed antennas. We have supported the general RFID markets throughout the 1990s, mainly printing functional materials, such as in-house blended conductive inks. Starting into the 2000s, Topflight accelerated this effort by assisting one of the main players in the UHF space for RFID. We have since converted many inlays of different frequencies from around the globe and are also technically innovative in areas that may soon help the RFID market, such as printed transistors.

pP: When did you first start producing RFID tags and/or labels? What prompted the decision to start making these products?
Mitchell—We began R&D into RFID in the early 90s as a result of the introduction of thin, flexible inlays that could be incorporated into labels, and at the request of our customers in the transportation and airline industries. We commercialized RFID labels in 1995. The addition of RFID to our product lines has allowed us to grow with our customers’ needs.

Before the mergers in 2003 and 2004, RR Donnelley, Moore, and Wallace had initiated separate research programs into manufacturing RFID labels. With the mergers, we were able to capitalize on combining the different approaches. This has given us the scope to deal with the wide variety of RFID products that are being introduced into the market today.

Davenport—We have been producing RFID products since 2001.

Hartmann—The “real” start was in the 1970s when we were printing conductives for flex circuits, membrane switches, antennas, etc. The actual push towards RFID happened in the 1990s with antenna and migrated to RFID labels and tickets into the 2000s. Our learning curve for RFID during the start and into the 2000s was greatly accelerated by supporting Alien Technologies as its in-house printer/converter and by custom equipment we built in-house which supported our initial RFID efforts.

pP: For what markets do you make smart labels?
Davenport—We focus on several markets: airports, airlines, government, retail, consumer product groups, automotive, and transportation.

Hartmann—We serve four primary market groups—consumer and durable goods, cosmetic and personal care, medical and pharmaceutical, and electronics—possessing different market shares for RFID within each group. We have a refined granularity to the market here. We filter all the RFID verticals through our four divisions and bucket them into three categories, based upon capabilities required and “type” of label/ticket we are to produce. So the short answer is that we have capability to supply almost all the RFID market verticals, and have—including most frequencies and even some semi-passive efforts and printed active components for a future fully printed RFID transponder.

pP: What is the process by which you make smart products? (i.e., Do you purchase ready-made inlays? Do print your own antennas and use the strap-attach methods? Are you a vertically-integrated smart label manufacturer, etc.?)
Mitchell—Today we purchase inlays from a variety of sources and insert them into labels using customized RFID presses. We continue to evaluate alternate techniques including printing antennas and chipless technology to order to reduce cost and to offer customized solutions to our customers.

Davenport—We are a vertically-inclined smart label converter doing all of the above with the exception of using straps.

Hartmann—You’re talking about the specific steps in the value chain centric to inlay/label production. We do as much as possible, playing from our core competency. So we are a web supplier to the industry (antenna web supplier), we have intellectual property with a partner on low-cost/high-conductivity antennas, and we finish it off into labels, tickets, etc. with special features, if required. These features may borrow from our “label secure” branded products whereby we incorporate security features, such as taggants, color shift inks, etc.

pP: What were your major challenges when entering the smart label converting marketplace?
Mitchell—Marrying electronic components with label manufacturing is challenging, particularly with regard to quality control. We have been focusing on maintaining our high quality standards while dealing with variability in yields of incoming chips and with constantly changing upgrades to readers and software to monitor quality as the technology evolves.

Davenport—Poor yield rates!!! This was extremely costly and very painstaking in terms of the amount of people it took to replace failed smart labels with good ones.

Hartmann—The first challenge was getting the right equipment to do the job. Luckily for us, we were originally a “tool works” company whereby we built aircraft parts and then presses. So through the years we retained that ability, but only for in-house use, which allowed us to build our own equipment early for RFID. Don’t get me wrong, we still buy commercial-grade presses all the time, but we highly modify most.

I’d say the second challenge was the fractured nature of the industry and dealing with that as a part of the value chain. We became entrenched in the market by never branching out from our core competencies and by always being the in-house converter for Alien.