No. 1209
	Current Status and Subjects for RFID Application to the Iron and Steel Industry
	Investigating R&D Committee for RFID Technology Application in the Iron and Steel Industry
	Keyword : RFID, Iron and Steel Industry, Plant Engineering Work, Product Tracking System, Safety Management System
	RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is the individual identification technology that identifies data carrier by non-contact, using radio waves, and RFID is composed of the IC chip and the antenna. RFID is watched as next generation's individual identification technology. The reason is that RFID can update information and add information, and can identify two or more individuals in a lump, and has the permeability as compared with the conventional individual identification technology (especially, barcode). In recent years, the applications of RFID to manage manufacturing, selling, and transporting an individual article were performed intensively in the distribution field, the logistics field, the manufacturing industry. In the iron and steel industry, although there are some application cases of RFID to the manufacturing materials management and the transportation management in the some steel production facilities, the RFID applications do not advance enough in comparison with the other industries, but there are many needs of the further application for a small amount and multi-product production. However, there are many subjects for RFID application to the iron and steel industry from the reason that the special quality of the metal which is target for identification is a magnetic body, and that the iron and steel production facilities are very hot and bad environment for RFID. Technical Committee of Metal Industry Division of the Institute of Electrical Engineers Japan organized "Investigation Committee for RFID Technology Application in the Iron and Steel Industry ". It made investigation of the actual conditions, extraction of the subjects, and examination of the requirements for RFID application to plant engineering work, product tracking system, safety management system in typical iron and steel production facilities, for two years from July 2008. Basic investigation results concerning RFID technology application in the iron and steel industry were obtained through the committee activities. In this report, the investigation of RFID application status, the extraction of subjects in application, and the measure and its subjects for application expansion were brought together, and additionally its direction in the future was considered.
	©2007. The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan