Engineering Commons^™

Connected Alerts Across Manufacturing Facilities, Jordan J. Moy

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The lack of communication during a large project can result in costly delays when striving to achieve previously defined benchmarks. Often times, each part of a project will require verification from an employee of a specified area of expertise before being allowed to advance to the next stage. Finding these individuals can be extremely hard due to the large, spread out campus of manufacturing facilities as well as the numerous projects the company is concurrently working on. These floor support requests can sometimes take from an hour to even a whole work day, causing major delays in the production schedule. …

Robostock: Autonomous Inventory Tracking, Drew Christian Balthazor

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Optimization Of Rfid System Coverage In A Manufacturing Environment, Scott D. Malatesta

Master's Theses

This paper compiles existing ideas, theories, and experiments across multiple disciplines to provide guidance for a company looking to implement an optimal RFID system in their production facility. The desire is to maximize the information received by the system while minimizing the cost. Four potential layouts of RFID antennas, two with overlapping antenna coverage and two with non-overlapping layouts, are first analyzed to understand the special coverage and the number of antennas required. The value of information is then quantified to determine whether higher coverage layouts are worth the additional costs associated with the higher number of antennas required. It …

Investigating Present And Future Interactions Between Radio Frequency Identification, Additive Manufacturing And Supply Chain Management, Michael Nobuhiro Ochi

Master's Theses

A screening experiment was paired with research observing the past, present and futures of additive manufacturing (a.k.a. rapid prototyping, 3D printing), radio frequency identification, and supply chain management. The experiment tested different properties of objects created with a desktop fused deposition modelling printer to observe if any single factors or interactions affected the read range of embedded passive UHF RFID inlay. The combination of material and infill percentage had a statistically significant effect on read range, however the analysis is weak since the data could not justify the normality assumption of ANOVA. Furthermore, the size of the effect was small …

Rfid Technology Selection And Economic Justification For Healthcare Asset Tracking, Tyler Robert Peabody, Tali Freed

Master's Theses

Although Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Real-Time Location System (RTLS) technologies for inventory tracking have been growing in popularity, the healthcare industry has been reluctant to adopt these technologies. One of the primary reasons for this lack of enthusiasm has been the risk associated with electromagnetic interference between RFID/RTLS systems and medical equipment functionality. The other reason has been the substantial cost and complexity of implementing RFID/RTLS in healthcare organizations. In this study, we show that there are several ways to safely install RFID/RTLS systems to improve the inventory management processes of hospitals and clinics. We then analyze the inventory …

Rfid For Inventory Of Medical Records, Johny Wu

Biomedical Engineering

The purpose of this project is to explore the feasibility and economic viability of the implementation of a radio frequency identification (RFID) system in a large-scale, medical office setting. Practitioners in fields such as; medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers do not have a sufficient method for tracking filing forms. RFID has the potential to reduce wait time, improve checking-in time, and decrease the possibility of interchanging documents between patients.

The purpose of this RFID system is to improve upon the filing system already in place in any office setting. The major consideration behind this …

Radio Frequency Identification Classroom Management System, Andrew W. Wright

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Professors who manage large classes are unrealistically expected to grade each student fairly and accurately. Even with all of the technological advancements that have occurred in the past thirty years, very little progress has been made in classroom management, and as a result, professors are not equipped with enough tools to successfully manage large class sizes. Because radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is making its way into student issued identification cards, there is an opportunity to use it as a tool to aid professors in the classroom. The focus of this paper is to discover an effective system that can …

Implementing Rfid To Improve Animal Shelter Inventory And Allocation, Adam Mach

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project is to observe the best way to incorporate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology into the animal inventory system present in animal shelters, while also observing the benefits of implementing this system. The Woods Humane Society was used in this project as a sample animal care facility that could benefit from this application.

Many RFID systems can be observed in other industries, but very few examples this technology exist in animal shelters or smaller animal care facilities. Part of the reason for that is because funds are scarce at most animal care facilities, like the Woods …

Application Of Radio Frequency Identification To An Asset Checkout System, Ma'ayan K. Bennaim

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a growing technology which is increasingly utilized throughout industry. This senior project identifies an RFID alternative to the checkout system in the tool crib of the Cal Poly Aero Hanger. A new database is designed and built to interface with an RFIDeas AIR enroll reader. The system realizes vast time savings in check in times and increases student accountability for the tools which are checked out by tagging tools.

Rfid Tag Readability Issues With Palletized Loads Of Consumer Goods, Jay Singh, Eric Olsen, Keith Vorst, K. Tripp

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identification technology, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. This technology is being used in enterprise supply chain management-related applications to improve the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. However, this technology has not been able to realize its promised potential because of several factors, such as lack of congruous worldwide standards, privacy issues and less than perfect read rates in supply chain applications. This research aimed to evaluate the readability issues commonly faced by tagged cases of palletized consumer products. The variables studied in this research were …

The Use Of Rfid In Manufacturing And Packaging Technology Laboratories, Manocher Djassemi, Jay Singh

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Mandated use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on goods at pallet, case and item level continues to churn the Consumer Product Goods (CPG), logistics and retail industry. The statement “Internet of things” is slowly becoming true; with concerted efforts from standard setting bodies such as Electronic Product Code (EPC) global, International Standards Organization (ISO), Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies like Gillette, P&G and major retailers like Wal-Mart, TESCO, and the US DoD, to replace barcodes with RFID tags. RFID bridges many areas of manufacturing including inventory management, assembly operation, material handling, packaging and shipping by providing an accurate and …