THE WORLD'S RFID AUTHORITY

Boeing's Flight Plan for Dreamliner Tags

The company told a group of RFID vendors this week that its suppliers need a robust, durable passive tag to place on parts for its fleet of Dreamliner 787 aircraft. And they need it soon.

By Mary Catherine O'Connor

Oct. 28, 2005—Earlier this month, Boeing announced it would require many of its suppliers to begin placing RFID tags on a number of parts used in its latest line of commercial airliners, the Dreamliner 787. The airplane manufacturer believes the tags would make it easier for Boeing and its customers to track the parts' maintenance histories (see Boeing Wants Dreamliner Parts Tagged).

As in most large RFID deployments, this one will have technology hurdles to clear. For one thing, the RFID tags Boeing wants its suppliers to use don't yet exist. As such, the company invited more than 20 RFID chip and inlay manufacturers and smart label converters to Seattle's Museum of Flight Tuesday for a daylong meeting to describe what it wants in a tag, and when.

"We need tagged parts within 18 months," Kenneth Porad, program manager for automated identification programs at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told attendees. But that's not the tag manufacturers' deadline—rather, for Boeing to receive the tagged parts in 18 months, its suppliers will need the tags much sooner.

"Our first [parts] are due [to Boeing] in one year, so we need the tags in less than one year," said David Meyer, manufacturing program manager for Rockwell Collins, a supplier of electronics for communications and aviations. Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need time to assess all parts to which tags will be added. This will let them ensure that the tags do not pose any fire or other hazards while the planes are in operation, according to John Dimtroff, the FAA's national policy maker for electromagnetic effects, who also spoke at the event.

During the meeting, Daryl Remily, deputy program manager of automated identification for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, spelled out the key requirements for the tags. As Boeing announced earlier this month, the tags should meet the ISO 18000-6C candidate standard air interface protocol, based on the same specifications as EPCglobal's Gen 2 tag, and include 64 kilobytes of memory. They must function when mounted on metal, because many of the parts to be tagged are largely or completely made of metal. They must also withstand extremely high and low temperatures, as well as vibration, humidity, salt spray and the many other environmental conditions listed in the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) DO-160, which describes standard procedures and environmental criteria for testing airborne equipment used on aircraft. The weight of the tags is another important issue. The Dreamliner design offers a weight savings compared with other planes, but Boeing and its airline customers don't want to see that savings lost because of the tags' addition.

The form factor each tag takes will be dependent on the part to which it will be attached. Some will be rigid, others flexible. In some cases, the tag may need to be housed in protective material, and size is another concern. Many parts requiring tags are smaller than the common 2- by 3-inch label.

Boeing hopes the tags will last for up to 20 years. It's a tall order with a quick turnaround time, and Porad and other Boeing speakers stressed the importance of chip makers to work closely with tag manufactures and label converters to develop the RFID labels needed to meet the company’s requirements.

At the close of the meeting, Porad invited all vendors present to send Boeing a letter within the next 30 days, indicating their interest in working further with Boeing and its suppliers to develop the required RFID tags. The letter would not need to include pricing and delivery details. "This is not a request for proposal," said Porad. Rather, Boeing is soliciting chip and tag makers to develop products to meet the memory and performance requirements Boeing has set forth, and to offer these products to its suppliers.

One important detail still to be ironed out is data security. Boeing says that it would like some type of authentication and/or data encryption to be built into the tag. At the Nov. 15 meeting of the Automated Identification and Data Capture Task Force (a subset of the Air Transport Association in Chicago, Boeing, along with a dozen or so of its suppliers and airline customers on the task force, plans to hash out what this security standard should be. Porad chairs this task force and its members have been influential in developing the airplane part tag requirements thus far.

Sue Hutchinson, director of product management for EPCglobal US, explained that a tag created to meet Boeing's present tag requirements could fall under the EPCglobal Gen 2 standard. Still, if participants of the Nov. 15 meeting decide to require data encryption, EPCglobal might possibly need to develop a new specification for the tag.

Porad said Boeing has identified 1,750 individual Dreamliner parts it wants tagged. There are a number of reasons Boeing selected these parts. Some have extremely high dollar values, while others have a limited life and need to be replaced frequently (to ensure they are replaced promptly, alerts can be encoded in the tags' memory). In some cases, the parts require frequent maintenance to avoid failure.

The company is not acting alone, however. Porad said Boeing and its European competitor, Airbus, have worked together to ensure that tags and labels developed for Boeing suppliers will also be accepted by Airbus, should it make a similar tagging requirement. This is important, because 70 percent of Boeing's suppliers also supply Airbus. Thus, if Airbus joins Boeing in requiring this type of tag on parts, Porad said, the volume of tags needed could reach 2 million per year.

Boeing noted that the airlines are largely responsible for the momentum behind the tagging requirement. "Boeing's customers came to Boeing and asked for this," said Remily. The benefits to Boeing's airline customers would come through being able to keep electronic maintenance records on the tags themselves. This would cut down on the airlines' paper records, while enabling mechanics to reference the maintenance history of a particular part more quickly and easily since that data would be displayed on the handheld reader used to identify the part.

For Boeing's suppliers, tagging parts would be an added cost of doing business with the company. Early estimates indicate the tags could cost $15 each, but Meyer said his company, Rockwell Collins, could reap internal benefits from tagging its parts. Unlike retailer mandates, such as those made by Wal-Mart, Target and others, the value of the tags placed on airline parts would extend throughout the life of the part. This means the suppliers' investment in the tags could provide a return when the parts are sent back to the supplier for repair or modification.

"Our maintenance department is very excited about RFID," said Meyer. Today, he explained, it is sometimes difficult for Rockwell Collins to get an accurate and complete maintenance history on the parts returned to the company. Plus, without a complete history, it's impossible for the company to know all variables that might be causing a part to malfunction. "But imagine a part coming in with a bible of the part history [encoded to the tag]. RFID will reduce our maintenance costs," he said.

Once developed, the tags might also suit a number of other manufacturers needing to keep maintenance histories of parts that have high metallic content and are exposed to extreme temperatures, such as those in the automotive industry.

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