Exploiting RFID in a Challenging Environment:

A Commercial Case Study of Plant Rental and

Intermittent-wireless Hand-held PDA-based Scanners

Peter Dickman

, Gareth P. McSorley

, Jim Liddell

John Glen

and Jim Green

University of Glasgow, Department of Computing Science

17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK

Spartan Solutions Ltd., Ladywell Business Centre

94 Duke Street, Glasgow G4 0UW, UK

Abstract. This experience report presents an overview of the Phalanx software

system from Spartan Solutions. This is an RFID-based asset-tracking solution,

exploiting robust hand-held PDA-based scanners with intermittent wireless con-

nectivity to integrate operational activities with ERP/logistical information sys-

tems for the plant-rental sector. Unusual challenges in the operating environment

and user community have been overcome using novel techniques and unique

combinations of technology and methodology. The Phalanx system is an exem-

plar of an innovative RFID application overcoming signiﬁcant data management

problems. Wireless security issues have been addressed and the system includes

internal web-services interfaces that are now being extended for exploitation in

operational and corporate oversight applications. The middleware platform en-

ables integration of previously separate applications, with extension of business

processes to the operational domain. The experiences reported have been gained

in development, deployment and use in several countries and offer an insight into

the effectiveness of an RFID-enabled infrastructure for improved business per-

formance in a new commercial sector.

1 Introduction

Spartan Solutions Ltd is a UK-based leading edge technology company and software

consultancy offering RFID-based asset tracking systems with total integration into ex-

isting logistics and servicing management systems and business processes. Spartan is a

major player in asset tracking for the rental market, with systems deployed in the UK,

mainland Europe and North America.

This short paper presents a commercial case study demonstrating integration of an

innovative RFID-enabled application with commercial logistics software, using inter-

mittently connected hand-held wireless devices. The challenging ﬁeld conditions faced

by Spartan’s rental customers have directly inﬂuenced the overall software architecture

for their application systems, and the Phalanx middleware layer is designed speciﬁcally

to address the business needs of Spartan’s principal markets.

Dickman P., P. McSorley G., Liddell J., Glen J. and Green J. (2007).

Exploiting RFID in a Challenging Environment: A Commercial Case Study of Plant Rental and Intermittent-wireless Hand-held PDA-based Scanners.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on RFID Technology - Concepts, Applications, Challenges, pages 75-81

DOI: 10.5220/0002426500750081

 SciTePress

2 Background: Asset Tracking in the Rental Market

Plant rental companies operate in a highly-competitive market, providing a broad spec-

trum of items for their customers, ranging from mobile generators that can be the size

of a small car or a shipping container, to individual cables or boxes of tent pegs, leased

for periods of days or weeks. Although the logistical processes in such companies are

usually highly automated, with efﬁcient call-centre based front ofﬁces, the nature of the

items being rented means they tend to be stored in large depots, or even ﬁelds. Further-

more, since many of the items are large and metallic, and some are stored inside walk-in

containers, there are challenges for any electromagnetic or line-of-sight communication

system deployed to support item handling.

Traditionally, paper-based processes are used to manage the dispatch and return

of rented items. Order sheets are printed from the order management system and car-

ried into the storage yards, where they are updated as required to reﬂect on-the-ground

knowledge and essential ad-hoc decisions about deployment made by experienced ﬁeld

staff. This transition to paper introduces a signiﬁcant dislocation in several respects.

Management lose visibility of activity and the disciplined automated processes can be

disrupted, leading to non-compliant behaviour by operations staff. Worse still, updates

from the paper sheets back into the automated logistics systems can take days, or in-

deed never be properly completed. Consequently, the tracking of rented assets becomes

somewhat hit-and-miss, and invariably errors occur that require manual rectiﬁcation.

Spartan offers a tailorable computerised solution based on RFID tags afﬁxed to the

rentable items, and hand-held wireless PDAs with integrated RFID scanners. Develop-

ing this system involved overcoming a number of signiﬁcant problems, as described in

the next two sections. The advances described here are essential enabling steps for the

deployment of RFID technologies in other challenging environments. The Phalanx sys-

tem, which is at the core of Spartan’s software products, is now deployed at sites across

the UK, Europe and North America, with worldwide deployment planned for late 2007,

as a result of substantial contracts with major multi-national rental companies. In part-

nership with manufacturers of hand-held computers and the leading specialist software

houses producing order management systems for the rental market, Spartan are rev-

olutionising the business practises of an entire sector, exploiting RFID technology in

conjunction with their specialist sector know-how and software.

The integrated environment and platform addresses process control issues but offers

signiﬁcant additional beneﬁts. In particular, the reality of operations behaviour can be

captured for exploitation in the enterprise systems with minimal latency. Forms of in-

formation never normally seen in an ERP system, such as GPS and timing data, are also

made available and reports can be generated based on these new modalities. Further-

more, other technologies can be enabled by extension of the computer-based approach

into the operations domain. Modular design allows the system to be tailored to the

needs of the company, for example allowing a small amount of added telemetry, or a

simple warehouse management application to be integrated, in situations that do not

merit the cost of a full-function inventory management solution. This ﬂexibility is the

key to maximising business value using an asset management system and is only possi-

ble because uniﬁed business processes are extended throughout the operational sphere

by the Phalanx software system.

3 Hardware Challenges: RFID in a Difﬁcult Environment

Several physical environment challenges had to be overcome in order to properly ex-

ploit the potential of RFID as a support mechanism for plant rental. The items to be

tagged include large metal entities that are subject to “robust” handling, both when

being loaded onto lorries for delivery and subsequently when in use. This introduces

signiﬁcant difﬁculties. Firstly, the RFID tags used on large metal items require back-

ing plates, to ensure a clear scanned signal can be achieved. Secondly, they must be

reliably attached to ensure they are not subsequently lost, and this must be achieved

without physical impact on the plant, so neither welding nor drilling is acceptable. Fur-

ther, the tags must be entirely weatherproof and designed to withstand physical shocks.

Fortunately, tags meeting these requirements, and appropriate attachment techniques,

are commercially available. Normal RFID tags are unusable when directly attached to

sheet metal, so Spartan has deployed some 25,000 tags designed speciﬁcally for such

use, with a special backing. Of these, only 5 failed in-house acceptance tests due to

manufacturing faults, and none have been reported as failing in the ﬁeld.

The electromagnetic challenges extend beyond the difﬁculty of tagging metals. The

yards and ﬁelds in which some of the tagged items are stored are large in extent and

uniform wireless coverage is further impeded due to the presence of metallic contain-

ers and other sources of interference. To avoid the costly requirement for large-scale

wireless networking, the approach taken was to attach RFID scanners to PDAs and

to develop the software system to permit intermittent interactions between the central

systems and those PDAs.

4 Workforce Challenges: Process Integration and Usability

The combination of advances in RFID hardware and the Phalanx software system, inte-

grated with ERP systems, offer the potential for considerable improvement in process-

ing of rental orders and in turnaround of the rented items. However, achieving those

beneﬁts required both extension of the computer-mediated business processes into the

realm of plant handling and order fulﬁlment and buy-in from the staff responsible for

handling the tagged equipment.

Typically, carefully designed ERP processes break down or are violated by oper-

ations staff due to problems accessing information or because of a difﬁculty with the

instructions given to them. The key to success in this ﬁeld is the realisation that op-

erations staff must be able to change and adjust orders, leaving them with the ﬁnal

decision as to which items will be dispatched. Failing to exploit this expertise always

leads to problems, and successful companies are very reliant on operational experience

and insights. In manual order completion the ﬁeld staff will also often correct errors and

dispatch slightly different equipment from that listed, using their expertise to interpret

the order and adjust the request as necessary. The ofﬁce staff normally never hear of

these changes, or, if they do, the information is rarely linked meaningfully to the orig-

inal order. Automating the systems, eliminating the paper-based step, allows prompt,

accurate and complete updates, showing precisely which items were dispatched.

Rapid feedback also allows order-taking staff in call centres, who are not aware

of local conditions in the operations sites, to better understand the issues involved in

order dispatch, and to learn from changes made by operations staff. This interaction

improves the service offered to customers and also empowers the operational staff, who

are able to address difﬁculties in a more effective and thorough fashion, knowing that

their decisions are being acted upon and valued. In addition, the more accurate oversight

of equipment which this approach offers allows far better control over maintenance and

servicing.

The extent to which orders are modiﬁed varies enormously between companies, and

between locations for a single company. Early ﬁeld testing of the Phalanx system for

a major customer showed that in excess of 50% of orders were subject to at least one

modiﬁcation or correction by operations staff. Even after signiﬁcant improvements in

upstream (front-ofﬁce and sales) processes, modiﬁcation rates in the range 30%-40%

continue to be reported. The most frequent cause is that an essential component has

been omitted from an order, however operations staff might also decide, for example, to

upgrade to a newer item to avoid sending a piece of equipment that appears excessively

worn (albeit usable) to a high-proﬁle location.

Thus the advantage of extending automation into the operations area is that the em-

bedded business processes can allow for ﬁnal-stage ﬂexibility, with immediate feedback

and continual oversight as orders are changed and satisﬁed. However, these beneﬁts

are only realisable if the existing, carefully designed ERP and logistical processes are

honoured. Requiring substantial process change during the introduction of the asset-

tracking system would eliminate most of the advantages and it was therefore essential

that the Phalanx system be adaptable and consistent with existing business processes.

Integration of Phalanx into a company’s information infrastructure requires ﬂexibility

in terms of process modelling and an ability to integrate into a range of database and

order management systems.

Employee perceptions must also be considered and their concerns addressed. Oper-

ational activities in the plant rental sector have not previously tended to be associated

with technology, and it was foreseen that some staff might be hesitant about adopting, or

wary of the introduction of, “automation”. To eliminate such worries, the user commu-

nity was involved throughout system development and deployment. An explicit design

goal for the handheld systems was that they should be usable with minimal training and

without the need for a detailed instruction manual. This “pick up and use” approach

required that the handhelds were clearly compatible with existing practise, and that the

interfaces were highly intuitive and aligned closely with the operational culture of the

adopting companies.

5 Software Challenges: System Integration and Intermittent

Connectivity

Addressing the issue of intermittent connectivity by employing hand-held computers

merely transfers the challenge of integration from the networking infrastructure to the

middleware software. Perfect consistency cannot be achieved between the corporate

information systems and intermittently-connected handhelds, given that changes will

be introduced in both settings. It was, therefore, essential that the software solution be

designed to permit, detect and support the resolution of, inconsistencies.

For example, operational staff engaged in order fulﬁlment may have to substitute

items or modify an order if faced with an inconsistency, or if the requested item is un-

available (e.g. if it is damaged during handling). Simultaneously, an update to the order

could be received from the customer, or a request could be generated for the item being

used to substitute for the faulty plant. In either case, at the time the order fulﬁlment in-

formation is passed back to the corporate logistics software, the discrepancies must be

detected and ﬂagged for immediate resolution. In a traditional paper-based system this

issue might only be noticed hours or days later, long after the substituted equipment has

been shipped. In an integrated system such as Phalanx the problem is detected within

seconds or minutes and can be resolved before loading is completed.

Furthermore, updates can be automatically communicated to the operations staff,

allowing them to be promptly informed of changes and avoiding them wasting time

on activities that have become unnecessary or counter-productive. On a large site, the

passing of updates to whoever is handling an order is vastly improved by automation.

In traditional paper-based systems considerable time can be wasted determining who

is handling a particular order and ﬁnding them, whereas the automated system directly

passes information to whichever handheld is being used to progress the order.

The movement of large items of plant means that, in principle, the handheld devices

could be damaged or destroyed. Although Health & Safety training means that accidents

are extremely rare, and the PDAs used are designed for rough-handling, the Phalanx

system has been designed to cope in the event that a handheld fails or is destroyed (e.g.

dropped or crushed). The central middleware elements are aware of the tasks passed

to each handheld, and the only updates that would be lost are those occurring after the

last period of wireless connectivity — a signiﬁcant improvement over the superseded

paper-based approaches.

User acceptance and conformity with existing business processes are both crucial

to the success of such a software system. To this end, Spartan employ user-centred

development processes for the handheld applications and business process-oriented ap-

proaches to the integration with existing ERP solutions and other corporate information

systems. Working with company operations staff has ensured widespread user accep-

tance, and the exploitation of agile techniques has allowed rapid iterations and updates

to address issues and suggestions in a manner that has further reinforced the sense of

ownership for operations staff.

An early version of the Phalanx software architecture [1] is shown in Figure 1. This

example uses a Movex

ERP system [2], with an underlying Oracle

database [3],

as the main enterprise software platform, but other ERP systems, e.g. from SAP, are

also supported. The Business (BAL) and Data (DAL) Abstraction Layers give access

to the core database used by Phalanx to manage activity on the handheld devices. The

writeback service passes updates into the central system to capture changes introduced

by the operations staff. The extraction service provides an indirection layer, simplifying

the integration of Phalanx with customers’ existing systems.

This version, using Windows Mobile

and Microsoft

.NET Framework 2.0 [4],

has been described, from a customer perspective, in a Microsoft Case Study [5]. Most

signiﬁcantly, its deployment reduced rental turnaround times from days to minutes.

Fig.1. Outline Software Architecture.

6 Ongoing Work

Ongoing work within Spartan is further exploiting the extension of business processes

into the operational domain. The Phalanx suite is being enhanced to exploit the real-time

information potential of the system, with new interfaces for depot managers and senior

management. Having uniﬁed ERP and operational activities, senior management can

also be connected to the resource. Traditional approaches can provide business infor-

mation for senior management, extracting it from the ERP systems, however this tends

to be time-consuming, clumsy and costly. By means of a lightweight, reconﬁgurable

web-based view onto the internal Phalanx information repositories, senior management

are being given a clear and continuously-updated insight into the activity in their depots

and the effectiveness of their company processes.

7 Lessons Learnt

The Phalanx system is a real-world commercially-deployed middleware solution that

exploits RFID-data in a seamless integration with existing enterprise information sys-

tems, extending business processes into the operational domain. Phalanx solves critical

closed-loop supply chain problems, and is one of a new generation of sector-speciﬁc

integrated software solutions that are leveraging the potential of RFID technologies in

conjunction with a more ﬂexible unifying approach to business process design.

Exploitation of RFID advances in the plant rental sector required an integration

with existing ERP and related infrastructures. Traditionally, ERP solutions focus on

large reliable server-based systems with many carefully-designed and strictly enforced

process steps. Operational activities tend, in contrast, to be very lean with a minimal

number of small process steps and ﬂexibility in approach to rapidly resolve unforeseen

and unforeseeable problems. Fusing these two very different perspectives has required

a unique hybrid approach at many levels. Distinct software development methodologies

(user versus process focused) have been deployed for the handheld software and cen-

tral components; inconsistency of information is allowed, detected and managed; and

highly reliable centralised systems interact ﬂexibly with highly portable equipment for

operations staff, exploiting network connectivity whenever it is available.

The software technologies deployed within the Phalanx system include: wireless

security mechanisms (based on 802.11x and an authentication server), web services,

purpose-built lightweight communication mechanisms, COTS database systems and

business process modelling software.

User-engagement throughout development and deployment has been critical to the

successful adoption of RFID in this ﬁeld. In particular, uptake is detectably more rapid

and thorough in sites involved in early stage development and conﬁguration of the sys-

tems, with slightly more resistance on sites at which the customer simply deploys clones

of the system. Such deep user involvement is likely to be essential to the successful

development of future RFID applications in process-rich environments, as these tech-

nologies penetrate other sectors.

Furthermore, to aid the transition to Phalanx, the Spartan handheld solution has

been designed to also work without any RFID or barcode tagging. In the absence of

tags, operators would simply type in the serial number of the equipment being picked,

returned or serviced. However, manual data entry slows the logistics process down and

is subject to human error. To ease the burden of retro-ﬁtting a tag to the asset, a very

simple tagging process is supported on the handheld which takes no more than a couple

of minutes per piece of equipment. This means tagging can be quickly performed in

bulk (for example during an equipment audit) or scheduled into routine maintenance.

As senior managers in two multinationals have independently stated: adopting the

Phalanx system is a “no brainer”, given the substantial business beneﬁts that accrue

immediately. Nonetheless, these advantages are only achievable because of careful in-

tegration with existing practises and processes, unifying the operational and planning

activities despite the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies they present.

The key beneﬁts of RFID-based item tracking are well understood. The experiences

reported here demonstrate the difﬁculties that must be resolved before that value can

be realised in demanding and process-rich domains, and identify approaches and tech-

niques that have been successfully deployed to overcome a number of key problems.

Acknowledgements

A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP 0856), part-funded by the UK DTI, supports

the collaboration between the Department of Computing Science at the University of

Glasgow and Spartan Solutions Ltd.

References

1. Dr Gareth P. McSorley, Dr Peter Dickman, Jim Liddell and John Glen, Middleware support

for RFID-enabled Logistics, poster presentation at EuroSys’07, Lisbon, March 2007.

2. Movex is a registered trademark of Lawson/Intentia.

3. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.

4. Windows Mobile and Microsoft are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

5. A Microsoft Case Study reporting experience with the Phalanx system is available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=1000003987

(web link valid as of April 2007)