RFID Middleware Integration To The Entire Supply Chain

Kirit Goyal, Deep Krishna

This white paper discusses in detail the design for a simple, cost effective and scalable RFID middleware that will provide a two-way integration between an RFID application and any business application. Introduction RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology is poised to dramatically impact and improve the way manufacturers; distributors and retailers do business and interact with each other. Many of these entities in the supply chain are already experimenting or implementing with RFID technology. All these interacting parties also have different business applications within their organizations. RFID being a new entrant in an organizations technology stack, there is a pressing need to integrate this new application with the layers of IT penetration already existing. This paper is an introduction to the amalgamation of RFID technology output with SCM, ERP, CRM, WMS and Asset Management applications. The middleware solution presented is easily deployable, scalable and versatile so that it can integrate with business applications residing on different platforms. It can also be leveraged to provide business analytics reporting. Let us first understand what is the requirement from an RFID middleware. Although the market and technologies are not very mature but from Forresters report on Evaluating RFID Middleware, the solution must include a balanced combination of seven core capabilities Reader and device management Data management Application integration Partner integration Process management and application development Packaged RFID content Architecture scalability and administration

Presented in this paper is a complete solution that describes in detail a seamless integration between an RFID application and any other business application. This paper assumes a preliminary understanding of RFID technology. In depth discussion on the underlying technologies mentioned as a part of this paper is out of scope. A brief background and understanding of enterprise applications and concepts around SOA, BPM and applications integration in general is assumed. The paper does not include discussions and costs associated with deploying a RFID middleware solution. Security and authentication issues associated with the technology are not addressed in this paper although RFID accelerates advancements in these fields also Understanding the RFID supply chain The urgent need for RFID data integration stems out of the fact that benefits of deploying a RFID solution incurring high capital investment can only be realized through the back end integration of the enterprise data. RFID data integration assumes added significance due to the fact that ID information of a tagged asset can be construed to provide tremendous contextual intelligence. This can result in valuable insights into the supply chain leading to tremendous savings and optimization. The RFID saga in a supply chain can begin from its tagging to the raw material at the supplier site. The item is then received into the warehouse where it may either go through a manufacturing process or if it is a buy item, ready for shipment against sales orders. After shipment to customer site, the repair and maintenance of the item may happen either at the site or at some repair facilities. See Fig1. for details.

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Supplier Mfg Source
Identify and Tag Asset when Mfg is Complete Components placed in 'Shipping Fixtures or Packaging Complete

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Land Transport Enroute to Site RC data or Carrier GPS data Receipt of Material at Warehouse Verify All Major Components Installed / Stored in location Further Manufacturing Sales order shipment Land Transport Enroute to Site RC data or Carrier GPS data

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Warehouse)

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Fig 1. The RFID Supply Chain During this entire cycle the following transactions are taking place ASN from supplier Receipt in receiving dock Quality Inspection Deliver to Warehouse Intra Warehouse Transfer Inter Warehouse Transfer Intransit Shipment Issue Components to WIP Return Assemblies to WIP Return Components from WIP WIP Assembly Completion Pick Confirm Packing Sales Order Shipment Return Material Authorization Maintenance Work Order Generation Service Request Creation RFID Tags and readers can be used across this supply chain and in all the transactions listed above. However, there will be different business applications in an organization, which generate, control and execute the above transactions. The challenge therefore is to Maintain a channel of communication between the business application and the RFID application. This can be to request a read or to validate an existing read or to stop reading. Transfer and move the data generated by the RFID application to a schema, which will be used by the middleware to process and then submit for further processing to the business applications. A comprehensive filter which will weed out duplicates from the data flowing in Classifying the data into correct transaction buckets

Mapping the classified data to First the business application it should hit, and secondly the actual transaction bucket it falls into. Interfacing the data to the business application in a format that is acceptable to that application. In carrying out the above process, there must exist an inbound and outbound transmission platform, which can talk to multiple applications.

Fig2 explains in detail the technical architecture of the solution

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Business Process Start/End points Data Transmission Data Filtering Data classification Process-level Security Process-level Errors

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Two options for the solution

The above technical architecture can be modeled in two possible ways 1. Most enterprises already have an EAI application that acts as a middleware between different applications. This existing EAI application can be leveraged to model the above solution. The advantages are that no more investment is required in the procurement of the software and there is more flexibility available. This paper lay emphasis on such a kind of solution

2. The second approach is by developing an application, which will provide all the above functions. While it
will perform all activities, it is certainly not as scalable and flexible as the EAI based solution. RFID Middleware Solution The EAI based RFID middleware solution is discussed in the following pages. It entails a complete approach that covers all the requirements from a middleware. Communicating to the RFID Application An EAI application will be used to communicate with the RFID application. The EAI application is capable of launching operating system level scripts that will spawn the task to be carried out by the RFID application. The OS script will be called to execute the following 1. A periodic batch collection of all transactions that have taken place since the last successful batch run. 2. Any specific task to be carried out as required by the middleware. It can be asking for another read or validation of existing data. Data management The periodic batch program will pull all transaction data from the RFID application and dump it into a staging table in the middleware.

A processor will periodically scan the staging table for any new transactions. This processor will match each record in the staging table with the history table. The purpose of this matching to filter out duplicate transaction records. The key here is to be able to identify the duplicate record. This can be achieved through a unique combination of 1. Tag ID 2. Reader ID 3. Reader Location The processor will use data obtained from the reader as an identifier to weed out false reads. This will be based on rules engine using heuristics. An illustration isSometimes a reader at a trash compactor picks up tags on cases that pass by on a forklift. In this case there will be some transactions that will flow into the filter like Move from stored location to trash compactor and move from trash compactor to a new location where the fork lift takes the item finally. In Such cases a rule which will take into account the intervening time period between the two transactions at the trash compactor reader will weed out this false read. Logically, an item cannot stay at the compactor for 15 seconds. Once the transaction records have been filtered, they will be inserted into the history table. These inserted records will then form the basis of the next batchs filtering activity. The successful records that have been processed will be deleted from the staging table. Classifying the data into correct transaction buckets This step along with the filtering processor forms the heart of the middle ware. Described below are details of four common transactions in the supply chain and how the middleware can classify those transactions correctly. 1. PO Receiving against ASN Fig1. Describes the PO receiving process into an organization using Advanced Shipment Notifications. The RFID supply chain will start with the supplier placing the tag on the item / pallet for the buyer. The tagged pallet was received in the warehouse. In between there may be an ASN to the buyer and that ASN can also have the Tag information. The supplier will apply the tag at the time of shipment of goods from supplier site. It will contain the following mandatory information: Field Shipment Number Vendor Name Vendor Site Bill of Lading Packing Slip Number of Containers Airway Bill Number Transaction Date Quantity Unit of Measure Item Description Document Number Document Line Number

The same information will also be sent through the ASN to the receiver. When the material arrives at the receiving dock, the reader at the dock will read the tag and in addition to the data above will also be able to generate the following data Field Location Code Reader Id Transaction Date Description Row / Rack / Bin

The combined data will be transmitted by the middleware that will be filtered. The filtered transaction then can be classified as a PO receiving transaction. This can be done by a combination of the tag id, reader id and location at

the receiving dock and PO number. These fields uniquely identify that the transaction is a PO receiving transaction. This is how classification of data can be done at the time of PO receiving. Intra Warehouse Movements Within a warehouse, multiple transactions can take place. This can include movement from one stocking location to another, movement to a manufacturing facility or movement to a packing and staging area for shipment against a sales order. Fig 1 describes a representation of transactions taking place within a warehouse.

In case the movement of material takes place from one location to another, the following data fields will be able to identify a transaction Field Transaction Type Shipment Number Location Code Bill of Lading Packing Slip Number of Containers Airway Bill Number Transaction Date Quantity Unit of Measure Item Description Document Number Document Line Number Mobile Transaction Tag Id Warehouse Subinventory Physical Location Transfer Subinventory Transfer Organization Transfer Locator Demand Source Operation Sequence Customer Lot Number Serial number Freight Carrier LPN Number Delivery Number Transportation Detail

Again the combination of these fields along with the tag id and reader id will be able to identify and classify the type of transaction. For sales order based shipments the tag can carry information for the relevant sales order, LPN and delivery number. Customer Service After the shipment reaches the site and is installed, readers at the site can be used to generate alerts for maintenance events. At this point, the unique data fields that will help classify the transaction will be the tag id, reader id, location and the date of receipt at site.

Application based filtering and classification Subsequent to transaction based classification of all records, the next step is to identify the correct business application it should interface to and map that data record to the fields of the business application so that when the data is published, it goes and sits directly into the interface tables of those systems. This classification will be made by the combination of tag id, reader id and location of the reader coming from the RFID system and the middleware classification described above. So, the transaction classification along with the RFID data will be used to identify the business application bucket in which it resides. Here is a representative sample If the Reader is located at the receiving dock and the middleware transaction classification is PO receipt, then the business application to which the record should interface to is the ERP and WMS. If the Reader is located at the warehouse and the middleware transaction classification is intra warehouse movement then the business application to which the record should interface to, is the ERP and WMS. If the Reader is located at the supplier site and the middleware transaction classification is Customer Service, then the business application to which the record should interface to is the CRM or Asset Management application. Once this classification is completed, the data will be mapped as per the requirements of the destination application. The EAI application then push the data to the destination application and then execute a operating system level script to process the transaction records in the destination system.

Conclusion RFID offers a major breakthrough in providing clarity around the current state of product supply while dramatically reducing the transactional cost to capture real-time, detailed and accurate product supply status data. Adoption of RFID standards and sharing of information between trading partners can replace the proprietary, inconsistent and incomplete data used by demand planners with accurate, granular and timely data. The paper has described in detail a RFID middleware that 1. Talks to the RFID application and extracts data 2. Filters the extracted data 3. Classifies the extracted data into relevant transaction types 4. Classifies the transactions to the relevant business application 5. Maps the transactions to match the interface requirements of the destination application 6. Interfaces the transactions to the destination application 7. Is platform independent 8. Is packaged and yet can be easily configured to suit any applications requirement 9. Can be scaled to perform Supply Chain Planning

Fig 3 from Forresters report sums up the RFID middleware solution described in this paper.

Copyright in 2005 by Kirit Goyal, Deep Krishna