September 2007 BOEING FRONTIERS�2

n FEATURE STORY

Tag, you’re itBoeing has championed radio frequency ID technology andbar coding. These applications could transform the industry.

Boeing Associate Technical Fellow Ken porad and Boeing Technologist Susan Jordan demonstrate how a radio frequency ID tag affixed to a life vest might be read. porad noted that Boeing customers he’s met with are eager to adopt RFID technology for use on air safety equipment, as the tags will dramatically reduce the time required to ensure all equipment is present.

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BOEING FRONTIERS September 2007 ��

n FEATURE STORY

By deBBy arkell

Like time, technology improvements march on. High-memory radio frequency identification tags and unique item identifiers (UII) were in their infancy as recently as three years ago, and

the full scope of their application was not fully understood. RFID tags and unique identification (UID) markings contain

extensive amounts of data and are complementary in nature. In simple terms, RFID tags are akin to antitheft devices one might find on merchandise at a local store. High-memory RFID tags are small, thin tags attached to parts, assemblies or other objects and can store and transmit the equivalent of multiple pages of informa-tion via an antenna and a microchip embedded into the antenna.

Boeing also uses UIIs on what are known as 2D matrix barcodes, considered to be the next-generation barcode. These UID mark-ings—a variable-sized square black-and-white dotted matrix similar to what you’d see on an overnight delivery service package—can hold more information than a traditional barcode and be read even if the marking is significantly damaged. Affixed to or engraved on a part, 2D matrix UII data can include part number, contract number, original equipment manufacturer, date of manufacture and more.

Tags and barcodes are easily and quickly readable by handheld and stationary scanners—and provide tremendous benefit to custom-ers, suppliers and Boeing. Indeed, a Boeingwide team has been re-fining and improving storage capabilities and transmission methods, making a game-changing business case for industrywide use.

“We’re in the growth stage right now,” said Jeff Geear, project manager for Automatic Identification Technologies in Integrated Defense Systems. “A couple of years ago we were learning about standards and compliance, conducting pilot tests, and establishing the value we knew intuitively was inherent in these technologies. Now we’re shaping markets, forming strategies and driving change into existing business processes—giving us what I believe will ul-timately be a competitive advantage in the industry.”

MODELS OF MATURITYUID markings have advanced more quickly in implementation.

IDS began adding UID markings to parts in 2005 following a pol-icy change from the U.S. Department of Defense requiring unique identification and tracking of its high-value assets. Since initial im-plementation on the CH-47 program in Philadelphia, there has been a significant maturation of UII use on military programs at most IDS sites.

“We view asset visibility as a global service, and our activi-ties in this regard are shaping the market,” Geear said. “We’re also closely following what Boeing Commercial Airplanes is doing with RFID, and we’re sharing with our DOD customer the value this business model can provide.”

RFID, meanwhile, is the more powerful of the two technologies. While RFID tag technology is not fully mature—and while the to-tal production system isn’t quite ready to support its use—Boeing Associate Technical Fellow Ken Porad noted that RFID efforts in recent years have made significant progress on multiple fronts.

For starters, Porad said publishing standards on the use of RFID tags was “a significant accomplishment,” since the effort involved Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer coming together to cre-ate global, published standards for RFID tag interoperability.

“Boeing and Airbus share approximately 70 percent common suppliers,” Porad said. “Suppliers want the same requirements from companies they do business with, so it was very important to have all major industry players involved in establishing standards prior to implementation.”

Boeing leads the chargeBoeing has worked with the radio frequency identification tags technology industry, regulatory agencies, and standards-setting organizations to design and develop the world’s first passive, extended-memory, ultra-high-frequency RFID transponder for use on commercial airplanes. Boeing will implement this technology to improve aircraft maintenance operations and reduce the costs.

Many other industries have been using similar RFID technologies for several years to track materials, share information, improve processes and reduce cost.

Earlier this year the U.S. Senate RFID Caucus held its first panel discussion. Boeing Associate Technical Fellow Ken Porad and tech-nologist Susan Jordan participated as part of an industry group to brief senators and their staffs about how Boeing intends to deploy RFID technology on airplanes and throughout the supply chain.

A nonprofit RFID Technology Council is promoting the understanding of RFID technologies and their impact on U.S. and world economies. The council also works with government agencies, research institu-tions, nonprofits and U.S. industry toward better leveraging of RFID technology—and it will address issues such as national security applications, international and state perspectives, industrial applica-tions, global standards and interoperability, and privacy and security.

The International RFID Business Association also recently an-nounced the formation of the RFID Educational Foundation. Launched early in 2007 as a nonprofit charitable foundation, the organization is devoted to promoting and funding education pro-grams and research on RFID in the workplace in order to spur ac-ceptance and adoption of RFID in the global business community.

Last year Boeing worked with Commercial Airplanes customer Japan Airlines to simulate and document the potential effects of having radio frequency identification tags attached to oxygen generators on a 777-300. The exercise showed that thanks to RFID tags, inspections that used to take JAL mechanics 13 hours now take 8.5 minutes—a benefit that can be replicated across the entire commercial airplane in-service fleet.

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September 2007 BOEING FRONTIERS��

n FEATURE STORY

It’s our futureActions cited in this story show how employees are applying concepts of the Boeing Management Model to support the company’s business strategies. Here’s how. • Growth and productivity: Lean+, through application of Lean

principles in production areas and with support services, suppli-ers and customers.

To learn more about the Management Model, visit http://bmm.web.boeing.com on the Boeing intranet.

mark mcpeak, a munitions mechanic in St. Louis, places a Unique Item Identifier sticker on a Joint Direct Attack munition kit.

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Second, Boeing has successfully completed three on-airplane RFID tag proof-of-concept tests—twice with passive tags, and once with active tags. Passive RFID tags have no power source embedded in them and are activated by a signal from a read-ing device; they can be read from an average distance of 10 feet (3 meters). Active tags contain a power source, which makes them essentially act as transmitters, and can be read from a distance of 300 feet (90 meters).

As a result of those tests, the U.S. Federal Aviation Adminis-tration has agreed that passive RFID tag technology is safe, and granted certification. This means Boeing is now allowed to put passive tags on any commercial airplane in production today.

RFID technology is not quite ready for use, but Boeing and its partners are getting close—much closer than was the case several years ago. Indeed, Porad said the third point of progress is that Boeing expects the technology to be near-service-ready by the end of 2007.

Boeing is working with three RFID chip/tag designers— Intelleflex, Tego and Fujitsu. In fact, in mid-July in Seattle, Fujitsu’s Toshiya Sato and Tsuzumi Ninomiya successfully dem-onstrated their prototype of the world’s first 64 kilobyte fully passive RFID tag qualified for use on airplanes. It can be used with off-the-shelf readers. This demonstration represents a tre-mendous step forward.

This leads to the fourth—and possibly the most significant—development: the value proposition, or business case, for RFID tags. Boeing has held multiple RFID workshops with airline cus-tomers in recent years, demonstrating how RFID can add value.

WHO BENEFITS?Porad views the airline customer as the primary beneficiary of

RFID technology, though benefits to Boeing and suppliers are also significant. Here’s how:

Consider the safety equipment on a commercial airplane, such as life vests under seats. Before every over-water flight everywhere in the world, two or more crew members each spend 30 minutes physically inspecting under every seat to ensure a vest is there. Boeing has demonstrated that with passive RFID tags attached to each vest, a single crew member with a handheld device can verify the location of all safety equipment in approximately five minutes.

New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport alone has 1,000 flights per day, Porad said. “Extrapolate those numbers and the labor-hour savings is phenomenal,” he added.

Another example pertains to the inspection and maintenance of oxygen generators—critical flight safety items designed to chemical-ly manufacture oxygen should an aircraft lose air pressure in flight. Boeing recently worked with Japan Airlines and Kenichi Hayashi, JAL RFID team leader, to evaluate its maintenance processes, learn-ing that it takes 13 hours of tear-down time to locate the dates on pins of oxygen generators to determine if they’re still serviceable.

“Because it takes so long to check, and because commercial air-

plane ‘heavy checks’ are far enough apart, JAL was replacing items with 19 months of life remaining because the next check would be in more than 19 months,” said Phil Coop, RFID Service Ready project manager, and former aircraft maintenance supervisor at American Airlines. So JAL maintained a full set of “just-in-case” inventory.

“Repeat this on every 777 and 767 in their fleet for heavy maintenance and you’re seeing a lot of cost and inefficiency,” Coop said.

Boeing worked with JAL to simulate and document the potential effects of having a low-memory RFID tag, initialized with a few specific process-critical data elements, attached to every oxygen generator on a 777-300. This tag would allow the mechanic to get the needed information wirelessly, without taking apart the airplane.

The bottom line: What took 13 hours now takes 8.5 minutes.The savings in this single example can be replicated across the

entire in-service Boeing fleet, Coop noted, adding that “Boeing ex-pects to have in-service validation of this process this summer.”

The benefits of high-data tags don’t end with commercial air-plane customers. Suppliers also can benefit from RFID tags on parts, as the tags can be used to store part maintenance history. This can be particularly helpful in “no-fault-found” situations, Coop said—situ-ations particularly costly to suppliers and airline customers.

No-fault-found situations are those where a mechanic trouble-shoots a problem that leads to a specific component, which is then replaced. The suspected problem component then goes back to the supplier for repair, at which point the supplier determines the part is in good working order. The part is then shipped back at signifi-cant cost to the customer and supplier. Based on industry statistics and trends, situations like this can cost an airline up to $100,000 a year per airplane, Coop said.

BOEING FRONTIERS September 2007 ��

n FEATURE STORY

RFID benefits suppliersWhat once took a weekend of working overtime sorting and inventory-ing parts kits now takes five minutes thanks to a new radio frequency identification system.

Philadelphia’s Supply Chain Management Systems and RFID Global So-lutions, a supplier and installer of RFID products, developed a system to track more effectively the movement of government property and high-dollar Boeing-owned parts and tools.

Boeing’s Parts Tracking and Accountability system associates a part with an RFID tag and updates legacy systems as the part moves through the factory and off-site warehouses. Suppliers and other partners are connected to this system as well.

The RFID chip contains only a chip number, thus eliminating the chance of releasing Boeing-specific data.

Today, Boeing has implemented point-of-use delivery, sending elec-tronic parts requests to the third-party warehouse, resulting in direct deliveries to the manufacturing shop. Warehouse staff can use hand-held scanners at the mechanic’s station in addition to the buildings’ portals to read the tag.

Now, parts are right where the mechanic needs them. And with this technology, the process improvement opportunities are growing.

RFID tags also bring real-time visibility to Boeing’s supply chain, which creates many benefits. Among them: Substantially reducing loss of high-value parts; misplaced tools or equipment can be “sniffed out” with a handheld RFID reader.

—Donna McGinley

Bill Schweiker, a production controller in philadelphia, uses a handheld radio frequency identification reader to scan a passive RFID tag.

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RFID/UID stories in past FrontiersBoeing Frontiers previously has reported on radio frequency ID tags and the Unique Identification program. To read these articles, see Page 31 of the December 2004/January 2005 issue and Page 23 of the June 2005 edition. Or you can view these articles online at http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2004/december/i_ca4.html and http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2005/june/i_ids4.html, respectively.

“We want to log that kind of data into the RFID tag,” he said. “This way it can help identify items that are frequently a part of these scenarios and help establish better troubleshooting processes.”

Porad noted that Boeing also stands to benefit from tag applica-tion on parts, as it will help Boeing understand the consumption history and the reliability of Boeing-made parts. That knowledge can help Boeing know how many parts to build and improve fore-casting for long-lead parts.

Geear said that the opportunities for using high-data tags and markings in aerospace are undeniably limitless. That’s particular-ly true in the product support arena, as the tags could hold and relay technical manuals, publications, maintenance instructions, calibration histories and more directly to an operator or maintainer through a wireless network or other information system.

SMALL TAGS, BIG CHALLENGESThe benefits of this technology are obvious and very compel-

ling. However, the seemingly simple task of tagging parts is not without considerable challenges.

Boeing has been touting the benefits of RFID and UID mark-ings for some time, but there continues to be a perception of risk that the introduction of this new feature could interfere with pro-duction. So Boeing has spent time value-stream-mapping tag use on the 737 program, completing a “paper pilot,” which maps out parts delivery to the factory up to the point of customer delivery. The program has identified a number of engineering issues that have been quickly mitigated and has provided visibility to where tags can add the most value.

“It’s easy to do, but difficult to implement,” Porad said. “The

investment required to change processes at Boeing and at our sup-plier locations—including time, resources and new procedures—seems daunting. We must continue to communicate the value proposition to all stakeholders.”

Geear also noted similar challenges: Although Boeing is re-garded as a leader in the use of high-data tags, ongoing supplier training has been required, including UID overviews and dialog on the UID impact with subtier suppliers.

Another challenge is that RFID requires data entry—the tags are only as data-rich as the input made by users. Controls must be in place to ensure that the data required is entered and maintained appropriately. “It won’t happen overnight,” Coop said. “We need to prove there’s value to it and get participants to contribute to the solution. However, there are orders of magnitude of benefit, even if partial information is added.

“Ultimately, it’s not what the tag can do but what it can enable,” he continued. “We consider RFID a Lean-enabling tool, and prob-ably the strongest enabler to Lean that we can introduce.” n

debra.j.arkell@boeing.com