You Are What You Ship

As machinery vendors, we must ship 100 percent perfect products, every time to every customer. We get more time to get an order right and a lot more money than label printers/converters do for their products, so our perspective is different.

Nonetheless, when a converter adds to its capabilities by becoming an RFID label supplier, a key guiding principle must be assuring that it secures methods that guarantee it manufactures 100 percent functional RFID products. Early on, we heard statements such as, “I’ll offer two price levels, non-inspected and inspected labels.” Competitors who had efficient systems to remove defects before integration into labels and furnish 100 percent functional products matched the pricing of these Walter Mittys and they were finished.

The RFID Web page of a leading supplier of RF tags to the pharmaceutical and airline bag tag markets illustrates this: It is completely dedicated to a discussion of 100 percent functionality (no mention of great price, great service, extraordinary design or delivery). And they get the contracts.

While this may be obvious for some, market conditions exist which may lead many to believe that there is an acceptable margin for error when shipping finished products.

First, every major encoder/applicator machine has provisions for recognizing a low- or non-performing RFID label and eliminating it from the downstream process. However, consecutive or frequent defects will slow a high-speed line to unacceptable levels. There will also be the headache of reconciliation of labels that are paid for, but are defective.

Second, it will be difficult for most label and integration machinery to recognize and deal with defective transponders in the process of adding them to labels. While former abysmal UHF transponder defect rates of 15-30 percent have improved with Gen2 products, these are essentially electronic components, and will always contain a certain level of defects in a supply roll. Dry (non-adhesive) inlays are always integrated onto the carrier substrate of a roll and cannot be doctored out of the roll if defective. RFID inlay suppliers can identify and mark bad tags, but it is left to the converters to remove them from the production stream.

So, hopefully, we now agree that:

• The product you ship to your customers must be 100 percent tested and functional.

• The raw inlay materials you obtain will have a certain level of defects.

• You, as a converter, must establish an efficient way to eliminate these defects from your final product.

• The various ways to accomplish step three follow. The right choices made here separate the winners from the money pits.

In order of preference, one could:

• Inspect and select only good inlays to apply to pre-printed or blank labels on a dedicated machine. As a dedicated unit, this machine is built to handle sensitive electronics. It will have capabilities to choose only functional inlays of any frequency and apply them in precise register (followed by specialty diecutting, punching, or perfing) to every label, regardless of how many defects occur consecutively. A true one-step process provides the 100 percent inspected quality required with the lowest cost per unit. Very high outputs can be achieved through the use of this machinery running up to four labels wide.

• Read and sort inlays on-press and add good inlays on-press. The ability of this method to add tested inlays to every label is predicated on the amount of consecutive defects and the repeat between labels. While most bad inlays are pulled from the production stream, good label web keeps on feeding. This limits your ability to assure all labels get an inlay, so an additional inspection and doctoring step is needed. Additionally, label print has not yet been inspected, and good inlays may be applied to bad labels.

• Add every inlay to every label on dedicated, off-line RFID integration machinery. This has been promoted as a high output process, certainly an improvement over the every label on-press solution. Unfortunately, to meet the first basic fact requirement you’ll need an additional inspection and doctoring step afterward with all of the associated labor and costs.

• Add every inlay to every label on-press, then run through a second off-line process to weed out defects. A press not designed and engineered to run electronic components is likely to add to the defect rate. There will be lots of extra processing time and you now have the unique privilege of duplicating the waste rate of the inlays in your good printed substrate. With a good yield of 95 percent good inlays, this may not a big deal at 100,000 labels, but at 100 million labels, that’s 5 million good, printed labels in the trash.

• Presort the inlays on a dedicated read and splice machine, then insert. Even with complex, slow, and expensive machinery, one still has no assurance that the inlays will work when they actually are ready to be joined to a label. Again, a lot of extra time and labor.

Smart labels continue to be a strong new market with many niches existing besides the 4˝ x 6˝ supply chain label. Profits go to those who choose the most efficient and flexible conversion method to handle the next new configuration right around the corner.

About the author

Mike Harris is CEO of Innovative Equipment, Ltd. the U.S. distributor of the Melzer SL Smart label integration system. With Innovative for 27 years, he has experience in the design, sale, and service of a wide range of forms and label production machinery and speaks at many label industry functions about the realities of RFID label integration.