There’s been a lot of talk about locking Birth Records lately. We’re nearing completion of a long and intense edit cycle for the RFID on Parts Standard that’s part of Spec2000, so the topic is being discussed there as well, with particular intensity.
A part’s Birth Record provides fundamental pedigree and manufacturing information related to a part — the company that made it, the part’s date of manufacture, country of origin, part number and serial number. It’s the type of data that you don’t expect to change. Your Birth Certificate doesn’t ever change, does it? But in the 2009 version of the standard (the currently published version) there is a line related to the Birth Record on the low-memory tag that states “companies may choose to leave the low-memory tag re-writeable, even the birth record”.
This has been a problem for a lot of companies, so the working group has been working on solutions that ensure only locked Birth Records are released into the wild. Most agree that it is in everyone’s best interest to insist on locked Birth Records at the point of manufacture not only for rotable and repairable parts, but also life limited parts such as life vests, landing gear and almost anything associated with an engine. Here’s why.
First, there is the premise that unlocked Birth Records are not reliable. They can be modified in all manner of ways, intentional or otherwise, which is exactly why the OEMs are so uncomfortable with leaving them unlocked. If an airline or anyone else decides that the data in an unlocked Birth Record is reliable enough for their own internal application, they can always do that. But with reliable data (i.e., locked Birth Records), there is much more associated value, and there are many more applications that come into play… including regulatory compliance.
Consider the case of life vest inspections. The FAA mandates a visual inspection before flights over water. Airlines, being fully responsible for the safety of their flights, are free to use their own inspection process when they see fit, but that process is still subject to FAA approval. With reliable data on RFID tags, the FAA is likely to approve an inspection process based on life vests that include tags, resulting in an enormous cost benefit to the airline. If that same process is based on tags that have unlocked Birth Records, does it make sense for it to be approved?
