Tego’s solutions enable data on physical assets for the aerospace, life science and energy industry. Use cases include digital MRO, pedigree for the pharmaceutical industry and asset integrity management (anti-counterfeit control).
Life science companies and medical device manufacturers can maximize operational efficiencies when critical product data and information is readily available throughout their value chain — from manufacture to distribution to end use. Tego’s AIP solution benefits pharma, medical device manufacturers and healthcare service providers by providing unprecedented manufacturing visibility and availability of product and regulatory compliance data.
Tego Platform captures product data rugged enough to survive sterilization and other manufacturing processes, while enabling aseptic manufacturing. This breakthrough technology is bringing the benefits of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to new industries such as life sciences and healthcare. As demonstrated in the solution brochure, the benefits come in many forms, including dramatic increases in process efficiencies and reduced production costs.
Tego recognized as one of the pioneers in smart asset management solutions, with its proven asset intelligence platform (AIP) solution targeted towards the healthcare industry. Makes every asset smart by bringing intelligence to things that have been unreachable with conventional IoT solutions.
When this industry analyst attends technology and industry conferences, I attempt as time permits, to seek out what I believe our technology vendors that are providing unique or different technology approaches to business process needs. In our next two Supply Chain Matters postings, I will touch upon two such providers.
The difference between ‘has’ and ‘uses’ reflects how efficiently those Assets can be made to work, which in turn reflects on the extent to which those Assets can be managed. IoT simply connects Assets to provide the data and dynamic management to enable business optimization of operations. But what are these ‘Assets’ that can create new competitive capabilities?
Learn how Tego’s Smart asset solutions are helping manufacturers, serialization service companies, distribution centers and hospitals bring quality, time and process improvements to their operations
For medical device companies, information will become the foundation for their manufacturing, and it will be augmented by more data about the product’s distribution, condition, and directions for use, re-use, and upkeep. In other words, devices will ship with a pedigree and become embedded with a digital record of their entire life history. That local information will be the benefit made available for all stakeholders.
Effectively managing parts histories is a key element of improved MRO economics. New smart asset technology can automate and optimize this process
A Different Architectural Approach to Internet of Things Deployment: Supply Chain Matters Conversation with Tego.
B/E Aerospace selects Tego as its worldwide tagging partner to beging tagging interior airplane parts such as airplane seats, flight entertainment consoles and beverage equipment. Tego’s solution enables digital information to be stored on the asset during manufacturing and throughout the product’s lifecycle so that data can be accessed by Airbus and Boeing and airline maintenance organziations, saving time and creating unbefore seen operational efficiencies.
The nation’s largest tissue bank, the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, is currently using Tego RFID tags to track their allograft tissues (bone, skin and soft tissues). This customer offers high quality tissue by having some of the most stringent standards in the industry. The added benefit of Tego RFID solutions helps them to maintain their high standards by providing accurate, real-time information about the status and location of tagged assets, tracking them from the point of collection throughout their facility.
Real-time visibility of these assets, combined with improved collection, management and analysis of critical data, will allow businesses to operate in entirely new ways to achieve increased productivity, improved safety and reliability, faster time to market, and greater overall efficiency and profitability.
The ultra high frequency (UHF) radio frequency TegoChip can easily stand up to gamma, eBeam, autoclave, and ethylene oxide sterilization without performance degradation.
As IoT continues its rapid growth, durable, high-memory tags will be critical for extending connectivity to large market segments not well served by more expensive, active “broadcast” connectivity methods. The tags’ small form factor, low power consumption, and low cost will make it possible to tag a much larger number of “things.” These “edge” things will likely to be the majority of “things” in the IoT.
Remote connectivity is a challenge for aerospace industry. RF technology has evolved to providing more than IDs on airplane parts to carrying maintenance records, files and safety check information so that entire value chains benefit. Airplane parts are going digital and getting smarter by having their own history and safety information stored directed on the part itself.
RFID tracking has been proven to be very useful countless times over with its implementation in almost every aspect of our lives. Tracking, for example is one of the many that RFID has “tagged”, decreasing human error in all aspects of inventory, maintenance and data collection for the aviation sector. This is where Tego “tags” in with their high-storage RFID tags to aid their supply chain partners. We spoke to Bob Hamlin, CTO of Tego to find out what it takes to design RFID technology for the high-flyers.
PAN: RFID technology continues to find new applications in a growing number of industries, the aviation sector being one of them. What were the contentions that led the aerospace sector to consider RFID? Bob: Maintenance is a high-cost activity for airlines and they are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) efficiency to reduce costs. Today, many organizations along the supply chain generate information about parts and important data ends up in many different places, leading to inefficient maintenance processes.
Airlines have documented workflows that show mechanics spend more time finding the paperwork associated with a part than they do on their repair activities. Additionally, many maintenance responsibilities are needlessly labor-intensive.
For example, we have seen cycle time studies around the inspection of emergency equipment such as life vests and oxygen canisters, and the overhaul of passenger seats, that show 98-99% time reductions when RFID is introduced to these tasks. RFID technology creates visibility into the supply chain and maintenance activities by allowing large amounts of data to be stored on tags attached to components. It minimizes unplanned maintenance and premature parts replacement and detects malfunctions early.
PAN: From being low-requirement solutions, RFID tags have moved up to a whole new level by addressing the difficulties encountered in tracking and maintaining aircraft parts, and more. How has this innovation improved MRO in aviation?
Bob: RFID tags can store everything from the simple information often found on an identification placard such as part number, serial number, and expiration dates, to detailed historical MRO information typically stored in a centralized dasu_tabase. With the tag physically attached to a particular component, the information is easily associated with that component.
Many tags in production today have specifically targeted flyable parts. Industry standards address environmental factors such as humidity, pressure, and flammability. Tags that meet these standards can be used in external aircraft locations as well as pressurized cabin spaces. Using standard reader equipment, aircraft maintenance staff can read a part’s vital statistics from the attached tag – from the date of manufacture and hours in service to repairs and modifications. In addition, they can easily obtain information that was previously accessible only by opening difficult to reach or secured areas, by simply directing a handheld reader towards the area where the part or component is located.
Ultimately, all of this same information can be shared across the supply chain between the operator and the maintenance organization, from one MRO to another, and between inventory management staff and parts suppliers. Technicians can immediately determine component status in the field in an efficient and economical manner. It all adds up to a more streamlined operation and allows maintenance personnel to focus on maintenance activities.
PAN: For maintenance activities, it is crucial to have the information at hand – wherever and whenever it is needed. What happens in the typical lifecycle of an airplane part, for example?
Bob: Not having updated information follow a part throughout its lifecycle is one of the biggest challenges for an MRO organization. In fact, information about each phase of a part’s life is stored in distinctly separate areas. Here is what typically happens at each stage of the parts that go into an aircraft:
PAN: Where does Tego fit into this value chain? Share with us the kind of solutions that Tego offers in this space.
Bob: By building on current RFID technology, Tego is creating “smart assets” with capabilities that go way beyond what has been typically thought of as RFID. For example, we have made advances in semiconductor technology to create RFID tags with up to 8KB of usable space, over 640 times the memory capacity of the original 96-bit tags used in the earliest retail applications. With this much memory available on the tag, it is now possible for supply chain partners to write pertinent information whenever a significant event happens in the lifetime of a part, and to keep that information stored directly on the part whether it stays in one place or moves around. That information can take the form of historical maintenance records or scratchpad messages from one technician to another. These smart assets can assist maintenance staff with making on-the-spot decisions.
We have also created chip technology that is especially useful to the aerospace industry. Our high-memory chips are designed to be fully passive, avoiding the added weight and potential RE interference associated with battery-operated tags. We have the only UHF chip technology that can maintain stored data for up to 30 years at high temperature. The stored data is also impervious to radiation, magnetic fields or high-powered radar signals. To keep all this information coming from multiple sources well organized, we have been leading the effort to standardize storage formats for RFID under the leadership of the Air Transport Association (ATA). Our software products, such as TegoView, provide a ready-to-use solution for industry participants to store and access ATA-formatted data on RFID tags. To add their own data in any file format they need, aerospace organizations can use TegoDrive which includes the additional simplification of treating RFID readers and tags as an extension of the Windows desktop.
PAN: Moving from a legacy system to being a “smart” tracking facility certainly doesn’t mean the end of the road. What concerns need to be addressed to further the advancement of RFID in aviation?
Bob: Airframe builders, airlines and MR0 organizations can get started in their own closed-loop systems, but in many cases the bigger benefits will be realized through the co-operation of all supply chain partners. [-Business standards are in place with ATA Spec 2000 and the EPC Tag Data Standard which allow for needed co-operation, but this still requires adoption by everyone involved in the process.
Another interesting challenge is around information security. Now that there is enough space on high-memory RFID tags to store so much data, the natural progression is for some people to want to store confidential or sensitive data, or to authenticate the identity of the source of the information. Preventing unauthorized read/write access may also be a concern. A lot of work is underway, by Tego and industry partners, to provide all of these security services.
Tego’s high‑memory RFID solutions, including best‑in‑class semiconductor chips, tags, and application software are creating distributed interconnected smart assets that communicate wirelessly and without batteries. With the ability to read and write information directly on assets, organizations can automate processes, make intelligent decisions at the point of use, and know immediately the history, condition and status of any asset. Today, through Tego innovation, smart asset capabilities are providing solutions previously not possible or imaginable. Tego, founded in 2005, is based in Waltham, MA. For more information, visit www.tegoinc.com
Tego, TegoTag, TegoView, TegoDrive and TegoChip are trademarks of Tego, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
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Last time I addressed some basics of the Internet of Things based on what appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding by lots of people. I also ventured into the area of wireless, batteryless devices to consider how they will be deployed in much larger numbers than their heavyweight counterparts that have on-board microprocessors running network stacks. Those concepts will also be applicable this time around as we delve into Big Data. Just like last time, it’s based on some questions I hear a lot. “What’s all this about big data? I get we’re generating tons of data, but what does that do for me? How is big data improving my life?”
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Something interesting has happened to me recently. On three separate occasions over the past couple weeks, three different people have said to me, “What’s all this about the Internet of Things?”. These are all people that I consider to be pretty well clued in on current technology, all of them have invested in high-tech startups, and all make their livings in technology businesses of some sort. And yet each one of them didn’t understand why people are talking about an internet of things. Sometime late last year the IoT rose to the level of having its own recognizable three letter acronym (TLA) and it seems like media chatter on the topic is everywhere these days, so it came as quite a surprise to keep hearing this drumbeat of confusion. Now I know regular readers of this blog are all very savvy about the topic. Right? Right? Exactly. That’s part of the problem. IoT chatter has ramped up so quickly that people don’t want to admit that they don’t get it. Well, allow me to be the one to go back to the beginning and cover some basics. Continue reading…
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