All About the Paper -- Dickeson

Follow the paper is the axiom of a successful printing firm of the present. The need to follow the paper will grow as the application of RFID takes shape over this next year or so. RFID in printing stands for Radio Frequency Identification tagging of inventories. Get ready for it, if you're not already. It's coming on like gangbusters.

RFID isn't a new technology. It's been around for at least 15 years. It can give us more current information than a barcode—and faster. In fact, one of the problems is what to do with all of the current data RFID can supply. We're facing an avalanche of information.

Nearly all of the major database suppliers are in various stages of preparation for RFID, except for the printing data systems. Those suppliers are reluctant to get ahead of their printing company users.

What's making RFID so hot at present? WalMart and the DoD (Department of Defense) have announced in the past few months that they are switching to RFID. Come the first of the year, they're going to require that their major suppliers furnish skids of goods with RFID tags attached. They're demanding that accommodation from their supply chains. That, and decreasing prices of equipment, are giving RFID the shot in the arm it needed to get going in this country.

Look Across the Pond

In Europe many companies are using it already—have been for some time—to track inventories. In this country thousands of cattle and other animals are going about their business with RFID tags in their ears or under their skins. Auto companies are putting RFID tags in our cars and trucks so that they can be tracked. Toll roads are using a form of them to charge for services. Many of us are using some form of RFID tagging already without being aware of it.

There are two forms of RFID: read only and read/write. Both are tags that can be affixed to a physical object. Both can be remotely "read" by a radio receiver tuned to their frequency, but the information on the read/write tags can be remotely edited or modified by a radio transmitter/receiver.

That ability to modify the data by high speed, and the re-usability of the tags, is what makes them particularly appealing to the idea of "following the paper" in printing. Data on those tags can tell us much about the paper used for the printing of a form or job.

First, radio tagging can tell us virtually instantaneously about the paper in our inventories of "raw" stock in our warehouses—age, type, amount in pounds or kilos, appropriation to form or job, etc., by lot or roll. Assuming we can work out uniform standards of data for supply-chaining, mills or merchants can attach tags to the paper as it leaves their warehouses so that it can be read as received at our docks.

We can then add the location where that lot or a roll is stored (or moved) in our warehouse. When that paper is queued for a job or form we'll know the date and time it left raw inventory for processing. When it's rejected by press we'll know where it is and we can add the reason for rejection. When it's converted to in-process inventory by press we'll know it as the tag is removed and returned to a tag inventory, or the paper is marked with a reduced weight and returned to raw inventory as surplus.

With tagging, the reading from the paper itself can become the inventory database. "Actual" raw inventory becomes the "perpetual" inventory instantly available to accountants and to paper warehousing. Skids of finished product can be marked with tags for the post office, shipper or the customer. Or, skids of product awaiting binding from press can be tagged with descriptive data—no more lost skids requiring re-runs!

What might it be worth to know count and location of work in process? Or, finished goods, stored for later delivery to the customer, can be tagged with count and location. Customers supplying paper can be given a security clearance to read the tags of age, location, grade and status of paper they've furnished that's on hand before ordering replacement stock. The list of uses seems endless for inventories that can themselves answer our questions—online.

Of course the list seems a bit overwhelming at the moment. That's why we must get ready for this coming tsunami of data. What radio equipment shall we order? Where shall we locate it so that it can read or edit tag data? Who's going to be in charge of editing data? What job descriptions will change? Are there standards for the data elements we'll be receiving? From the supply chain we're in? To the supply chain we may be in? What changes must we make to our present data systems? Where shall we keep our inventory of tags? Can we set up some tests so that we avoid costly mistakes? And on and on.

Planning, thinking, debate and research must be the order of the day.

Find the Benefits

What are the benefits we may expect? Where's the payback for all this disruption, planning and investment? First, ask the question: where will we be if we don't change? The answer to that one is the same one that suppliers faced with the advent of barcoding. If you didn't get with it you wouldn't be in business today. But that's kind of a negative approach. I suspect that the answer to the payback question for printers lies in an unexpected direction.

Since the mid-'80s we've been aware of JIT—Just in Time—as the need to increase turnover of inventories. We've given it lip service, but that's all. Since Goldratt wrote "The Goal" in 1986 we've been sort of aware of the necessity of reducing constraints in the flow of materials. We've listened to how timing workflow by the drum-buffer-rope idea would increase the speed of throughput in our plants.

But the idea hasn't really caught on for us in printing. We heard Dr. Deming in the '80s tell of the results to be obtained by SPC—Statistical Process Control. We knew that statistical detection and correction of major flaws as they occurred would speed production. But we've basically ignored Deming's teaching for the printing process. With RFID tagging the time has come for the printing process to follow through on all of that thinking.

How does RFID work this magic? By enabling us to "follow the paper" through the production process of printing. We'll know when the paper we've ordered for the job has arrived, how long it languished in raw inventory, how long it took for movement to press, how many hours were required for the production process, how long before the invoice was e-mailed and how many hours expired before collection of the money.

Where are the constraints, the bottlenecks to the movement of the paper to collection of the account? We'll know. We'll have the intelligence. We'll know where to direct our attack and be able to see the results.

Those results from "following the paper" will result in increased profitability and lower prices for our product. Is there a payback for printing in RFID? This is where we'll find it—increased velocity of paper through our plant. "It IS the paper, stupid."

—Roger V. Dickeson

About the Author

Roger Dickeson is a printing productivity consultant based in Sylmar, CA. He can be reached via e-mail: rogervd@verizon.net.