RFID Center of Excellence: Developing Pennsylvania as a Regional Leader in Technology
It’s embedded in new clothing, ready to sound the alarm should a shoplifter strike. It’s hidden in casino chips to prevent counterfeiting, and in wristbands worn by prisoners to monitor their whereabouts. Doctors are using it to keep track of surgical instruments and sponges during operations. Suppliers ship cases with it attached so manufacturers can gain visibility into their supply chain, improve industry accuracy, match supply with demand and increase sales.
This “it” technology is RFID-Radio Frequency Identification-a suite of technologies with nearly unlimited potential used to uniquely identify and track tagged items. Wal-Mart, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Food and Drug Administration, Las Vegas casinos, the World Cup Soccer Tournament, and MasterCard all use RFID. And among the forefront of research into this exciting technology is the RFID Center of Excellence at Penn State Behrend.
“Our main goal is to develop Pennsylvania as a regional cluster in the RFID industry, including growing the use of RFID and training IT companies in the state to be RFID implementers and solution providers,” says program manager Chris Wassel.
The center performs many activities, including RFID training courses that have educated over 650 business professionals and collaborative research projects with Penn State Behrend faculty and students. It also operates a state-of-the-art RFID lab housed in the new Research and Economic Development Center at Penn State Behrend.
The Power of Partnership
The RFID Center of Excellence was founded in 2005 as a collaborative initiative with the Center for eBusiness and Advanced IT, with the help of initial seed funding from Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP).
“Ben Franklin funding and support was vital in getting the RFID Center up and running and has been crucial in allowing us to continue to develop its programs and offerings,” says Wassel. Ben Franklin continues to support the Center of Excellence, recently awarding more than $71,000 to help fund a full-time program manager, a Penn State Behrend intern, continued operation and development of the RFID training programs, RFID Lab, university integration plan and RFID research projects.
The center has also partnered with Paradigm Wave, Inc., a Ben Franklin-funded startup company in Erie, PA. The company specializes in RFID software development and system implementation.
“We work closely with Paradigm Wave to match them up with business opportunities,” Wassel says. “Once business opportunities are defined, we also provide RFID technical expertise and assistance to them and their clients during the system design, testing and implementation phases. Paradigm Wave also has access to prototype RFID integration applications developed by the RFID Center,” he says.
No Limit to the Possibilities
“In the future, RFID applications will move from the case and pallet level (supply chain applications) to the individual item level,” Wassel says. Imagine a washing machine that can tell what clothes are being loaded and adjust accordingly, or refrigerators that can let you know when you need eggs or warn you that the milk is ready to expire. The center is also working on a project to integrate GPS and RFID technologies as well as to develop mesh networks, where RIFD tags can talk to each other.
The close working relationship between the center and BFTP presents great opportunity for current and future BFTP portfolio companies. BFTP can link other companies in its portfolio to the center to help them improve efficiency and operations, as well as brainstorm innovative applications of RFID to create competitive distinctions.
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