RFID Applied [Hardcover]

Jerry Banks (Author), David Hanny (Author), Manuel A. Pachano (Author), Les G. Thompson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471793655 | ISBN-13: 978-0471793656 | Publication Date: March 30, 2007 | Edition: 1

Radio frequency identification or RFID is a broad-based technology that impacts business and society.  With the rapid expansion of the use of this technology in everything from consumer purchases to security ID tags, to tracking bird migration, there is very little information available in book form that targets the widest range of the potential market. But this book is different!  Where most of the books available cover specific technical underpinnings of RFID or specific segments of the market, this co-authored book by both academic and industry professionals, provides a broad background on the technology and the various applications of RFID around the world.  Coverage is mainly non-technical, more business related for the broadest user base, however there are sections that step into the technical aspects for advanced, more technical readers.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Everything you need to know to implement and fully leverage RFID technology

RFID Applied is just that—the application of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. The book discusses both the technical and the business issues involved in selecting, developing, and implementing an RFID system.

The book's three parts, plus two appendices, give you everything you need to lead an RFID effort:

• Part A, RFID Applied, first gives you the basics of RFID and then the most recent advances and applications of RFID technology.

• Part B, Applications in Ten Areas, explores the use of RFID in such areas as the automotive industry, healthcare, retailing, and transportation.

• Part C, RFID Activities in Ten Countries, discusses how RFID is used in such countries as China, Germany, and Korea.

• Appendix A: Ten Unique Applications, examines some unusual applications, such as tracking gambling habits in casinos and helping parents find lost children in amusement parks.

• Appendix B: Ten Useful Websites, lists and provides brief descriptions of ten Web sites that contribute greatly in the sharing of RFID news and information.

As applications of RFID continue to expand, this book helps you fully leverage the latest technology for your own organization.

About the Author

Jerry Banks retired as a professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. His major area of interest is discrete-event simulation. He teaches short courses in simulation and in supply chain management throughout the world. So much material on RFID made its way into his short course on supply chain management that he decided to explore the opportunity for a book on the topic. You are looking at the result!

David Hanny is the Industry Director for Semiconductor and High Tech for Brooks Software. He has led implementations of RFID, factory automation, and automated material handling systems since 1996. Many teams under his direction deploy products and provide services and support for leading electronics manufacturing companies across the globe.

Manuel A. Pachano is a graduate of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Florida. His role as Chief Technology Officer of four companies has always involved him in the design and implementation of leading-edge technologies, RFID being the latest of these. Manuel has been directly involved in the deployment of RFID solutions in industries such as the healthcare industry, the automotive industry, and others.

Les G. Thompson, a graduate of the University of Georgia with a degree in computer science, is the Chief Technical Officer of Lost Recovery Network, Inc. His broad technical background, ranging from wireless device development to large-scale enterprise architecture, led him to the world of RFID. Leveraging his wireless and enterprise expertise, Les has been developing real-world RFID solutions since the beginning of 2004.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471793655
• ISBN-13: 978-0471793656
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,011,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jerry Banks retired in June, 1999 as Professor, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. He then worked for two years as Senior Simulation Technology Advisor, Brooks Automation, Planning and Logistics Solutions, AutoMod Product Team. He is currently on the faculty of Technológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, México as a professor with the title Academic Leader. He is the author, co author, editor or co-editor of thirteen books, one set of proceedings, several chapters in texts, and numerous technical and other papers. He is the editor of the Handbook of Simulation, published in 1998 by John Wiley. This book won the award for Excellence in Engineering Handbooks from the Professional Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, Inc. He is a co author of Discrete Event Systems Simulation, 5th ed., published by Prentice Hall in 2009. He is also author of the text Getting Started with AutoMod, 2nd ed., published by Brooks Automation in 2004. He is the co-author of Introduction to SIMAN V and CINEMA V, published by John Wiley, New York, in 1995. He is also the co-author of Getting Started with GPSS/H, Second Edition, published by Wolverine Software Corporation, Annandale, Virginia, in 1995. Other titles include a co authored text Forecasting and Management of Technology, 2nd ed. in press, and the single authored text Principles of Quality Control published in 1989, both by John Wiley, New York. He is also a co-author of RFID Applied. With Rajagopal, his completed text Crafting Managers: 100 Principles for the Excellent Manager is expected from Nova Science Publishers on March 31, 2010. It was published by John Wiley in 2007. He was a founding partner in the simulation-consulting firm Carson/Banks & Associates, Inc. located in Atlanta. The firm was purchased by AutoSimulations, Inc. (now part of Applied Materials) in May of 1994. He is a full member of many technical societies including the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) for which he served eight years as that organization's representative to the Board of the Winter Simulation Conference, including two years as Board Chair. He received the Outstanding Fellow Award from the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Alabama in 1965. He was named a Distinguished Fellow by the College of Engineering, University of Alabama in 1997. He was the recipient of the INFORMS College on Simulation Distinguished Service Award for 1999. He was named a Fellow of IIE in 2002. He is the 2010 Melvin Lohmann Medal Winner given by the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology of Oklahoma State University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars RFID definitely applied, July 15, 2009

By 

Michael Smith (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: RFID Applied (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

When you see hardcover book like this, it at first might appear as a college textbook with deep, dense reading. That's not really the case here. Having some previous experience with RFID working in a library, I thought I'd learn a bit more. As other reviewers have suggested, the book at times gets very technical but yet explains itself. By no means must one have an engineering degree to understand the principles presented, but you must truly have somewhat of a math and science background to understand what's going on in the world of RFID. This edition was written in 2007; I wouldn't be too surprised if in a couple years many parts of the book are out of date.

The first half of the book is ten chapters, going from a useful roadmap to implementation of RFID in a business sense, the history of RFID, readers and tags all the way to specific business cases (and long discussions of ROI calculations for business.) For me, the book began to shine at the end of the first half and in the applications section (the second half.) The privacy and security issues segue well during the last chapter, though I wish a larger section would be dedicated to this important debate. Ten use cases are then evaluated in the second half (covering auto, shipping, warehousing, etc.) as well as 10 countries (AU, CN, FR, DE, JP, SG, KR, ES, UK, and US) by external reviewers -- providing an outside perspective into today's use of RFID. Lastly, the appendix provides some unique vignettes of RFID use and application (let's pay for drinks by waving our hands!)

Well recommended if you want a good, medium-technical, monograph on RFID in the 20th century. But be prepared for some dense chapters if RFID is more of a hobby than a business or engineering project!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Whether you are an engineer, a business manager, student or just tinkerer, this book has great info for you., August 20, 2009

By 

D. Brennan (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: RFID Applied (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This really is a top-to-bottom overview of RFID technology, uses limitations. I have never seen a book about any technological topic offer such a wide range of information, not just about the technology itself, but on how it relates to different subject areas. For example, in the same book, you can get:

- An overview of the technology's history
- Details about the technical standards that govern it. Any reader with even minimal technology experience can understand it at the level discussed.
- An explanation of the concept of Return on Investment so that you can make the business case for implementing it. Seriously - they even go over how to do the math and present the case to the bean counters.
- Multiple industry-specific sections with ideas for uses with corresponding case study examples.
-Country specific applications

Basically, if you're a techie you will get a lot of in-depth technical stuff (though not to the level of wiring schematics and production planning), but you'll also get exposure to stuff that will help with communicating about topics that the people with the cash and ability to sign-off on projects.

Non-techies will get a great overview, that will require minimal use of Google to search for definitions, and will be able to hold your own in discussions with technical people - unless they REALLY want to show you up and start talking wavelengths and capacitor specs.

I would happily recommend this book to college professors teaching classes on new topics in computer networking and supply chain management. RFID isn't exactly new per se, but this book's treatment of the subject is far more useful than other books and sources I was forced to use in the past... Perhaps this group of authors can turn their attention to other technologies and applications such as ERP, Supply Chain Management, Data Warehousing, Network Essentials, etc, where the existing books are mostly either too technical for common folk, or not technical enough for the geeks among us.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple Concept but More Complex in Execution, July 1, 2009

By 

Paul Moskowitz (Yorktown, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: RFID Applied (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Around sixteen years ago, I was asked to contribute to an RFID development project. We did not have the web or a book like RFID Applied to explain it to us. We had to figure it out for ourselves and make it up as we went along. Today, there are dozens of books on the subject of RFID. We have the web and publications like the RFID Journal to fill in the details.

Mark Roberti, editor of the RFID Journal, explains in the book's forward that RFID is both simple and complex. I would add that for any answer to a question on RFID, there is always an exception to be explained. The authors of RFID Applied have done an excellent job of covering the basic subject matter, RFID systems, examples of applications, and RFID coverage in different countries.

This book is aimed at the professional who is planning on setting up an RFID system. The authors write in plain language that is easy to understand, although I have to admit that I have some degree of expertise in the subject area. I did find myself thinking as I read that this is just what I have said in my own presentations. I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my own PowerPoint drawings, Fig. 10-2, illustrating the Clipped Tag. (Don't worry guys, you will not be sued. We gave these out to the press, but maybe you could add an attribution in the next addition.)

There is one concept that I think does need further explanation. That is the ability of liquids to block RFID signals. Actually, it is not liquids as such, but conducting liquids like water that block electromagnetic (EM) radiation. The penetration depth or skin depth of the medium, water for instance, for EM waves is inversely proportional to the square root of the frequency of the EM radiation multiplied by the conductivity of the medium. Water, especially salt water, conducts electricity well enough that the penetration depth is very small for RFID 915 MHz UHF propagation. This is important for communicating with submarines, for example. It takes a real radio geek to think that the whole point of the movie "Crimson Tide" was to illustrate the problem of propagating radio waves through sea water.

However, there is a solution to the water problem for UHF RFID. You can use near-field magnetic coupling for UHF tag-to-reader communications. In the near field, generally less than one wavelength, it works amazingly well. You can put the tag in a glass of water and still talk to it. I first saw Chris Diorio, co-chair of the EPCglobal Hardware Action Group, demonstrate this at a group meeting.

RFID is an elegant technology. At the recent RFID Journal Live in Orlando, I observed that the technology continues to improve, there are new ways of using RFID, the tag and reader infrastructure is increasing in reliability while coming down in cost. However, the biggest potential application, the universal tagging of retail items is yet to come about. This may be the result of a combination of factors: the hurdle to overcome before any new technology is implemented; barcodes are inexpensive and universally accepted; and the status of the economy does not encourage businesses to try new things even if there is the potential for added efficiency and cost savings.

On the other hand maybe supermarket checkout with RFID may not be quite ready. While near-field magnetic coupling can solve the problem of reading tags through water-containing objects, there is still the question of metal or steel-containing objects. Back when Hillary Clinton was only the junior senator from New York, I did an RFID checkout demo for her using a basket of plastic fruit. She wanted to know when it would be in supermarkets. I had to admit that the answer was "not yet."

Although, there are many RFID books available, this is a good one for the serious professional. The authors cover the subject well and are up-to-date on the technology, with the exception of the new near-field UHF systems.