June 26, 2008 – Ravi Pappu, head of the Advanced Development Group at Thing Magic, give the inside scoop on how they scored what could become one of the most visible consumer uses of this new wave of RFID.

We have been fascinated how Ford Motor Company has found a way to use your RFID technology and make it an attractive value to the consumer. How did you get involved with Ford in the first place?

PAPPU: Ford came to us and asked us if we do any custom RFID work. We took on the project of creating Tool Link, which is a tool tracking and management system for the back of the F-150 and 250 series pickup trucks and the E-series vans.

What made Ford think that RFID would be the way to go?

PAPPU: In the course of their own market research, Ford found a lot of their customers wanted a solution that could help them to remember to take appropriate tools to the job site – and then bring them back when they were done.

There were several issues of not having the right tool at the right time. The most important one is the job doesn’t get done. I believe over 60% of Ford’s pickup truck customers use their trucks in their jobs, their profession.

So, the job doesn’t get done and gas is really expensive if you are off going fifty, a hundred miles to a job site. If you don’t have the right tools, then you spend a lot of money in addition to the time. Most importantly, it turned out that people buy replacement tools in order to get the job done.

They end up spending a tremendous amount of money when the simple act of putting the tool in the pickup truck is not accomplished.

Do you provide the end users the means to tag their own tools?

PAPPU: That is correct. The end users will receive tags as part of the package. The option, itself, is dealer or factory installed. Basically there is an in-dash computer that has broadband access. The Tool Link software runs on that PC and it controls Thing Magic Mercury 5E embedded module.

The module has been augmented to be very rugged. It is in a resistant housing and there are two antennas that are attached in the box of the pickup truck, also in resistant housing. The end user operates the system simply by using the touch screen on the PC.

The system, itself, is extremely simple to use. All you really need to do is turn on the ignition and you get a scan. The system tells you whether you are equipped to do carpentry or roofing or fencing or whatever you want to do. As long as you enrolled different tools into those job links.

So you would enter the names of tool and the type of work into a list on that computer interface?

PAPPU: That is correct.

Do you tag a group or is each tool individually identified?

PAPPU: All tools are uniquely identified, because it is quite likely that you may have many tools of the same type. They can have five or six different drill kits, for example. So, they all need to be uniquely identified. And we use standard EPC Gen 2, for that process.

Is it a manner of matching a number on a particular tag and then identifying during the setup phase, “Okay, my socket wrench is this particular number?”

PAPPU: That is correct. All the user has to do is take the unique alpha-numeric code that is printed on the tag and associate it with the socket wrench or the drill kit or whatever. Once you have that association, you physically attach the tag to the tool or the case.

There are a couple of different ways of doing that, either as an adhesive back sticker or more like a luggage tag. The tags are also quite rugged and they are designed to withstand pretty harsh environments.

How did DeWalt get involved in this?

PAPPU: DeWalt is a leader in professional tools. As it turns out, their end user and the end user for the pickup truck are identical, from a market perspective. Given their expertise in professional tools, it was a no-brainer. But this is not a system that works just with DeWalt tools.

When is this going on the market?

PAPPU:It will be available to consumers starting in the 2009 model years, around September of this year, 2008.*

There are some groups, some industries, that are afraid of the letters RFID. The Smart Card industry comes to mind in that they almost run in fear of those letters. One of our little pet peeves here.

Obviously you are selling a solution, you are not selling the technology; but are there any concerns on the part of Ford, or DeWalt, of consumers being nervous about RFID?

PAPPU: When you say consumers being nervous about RFID, are you referencing to anything in particular?

People have many unfounded fears about privacy invasion, for example. We will leave aside that the valid concerns that someone might have; most of what we see out there is a lot of garbage, in terms of unfounded, bad information, which causes them to be fearful.

PAPPU: Well, we have, we take privacy very, very seriously. I, myself, have done quite a bit of RFID and privacy work and a peer review journal about this. So, I am very well aware of the issue surrounding privacy and security.

Having said that, as the system is designed, it eliminates any of those concerns.

First off, just given the physical nature of the trucks, the antennas are located effectively inside a metal box, which is the pickup box – or inside a van, which is a metal box. Tools cannot be read outside the pickup box.

So, fundamentally, the physical construction of the pickup box or the van, adds a value to us by not reading other people’s tags outside the van. That also makes the system work, in the sense that there is very clear whether something is inside the pickup box or not. If you don’t read it, it is not there.

Great.

PAPPU: The second important thing is that the system is designed only to read the Tool Link. Again, to eliminate any concerns that even though the antennas and the reader could be used to read other tags, the software application will not admit any non-Tool Link tag.

Finally, the tags, themselves, are not changeable in the field in any way. You can’t mess with them; you can't kill them or write to them once they are written.

We have made it such that the tags cannot change, and because of the box, again, they can’t be read from outside, unless you are very close by. And if you are very close by, you are in visual contact. So, the system doesn’t make it any easier for people to snoop on your tools and figure out what tools you have until you are really close. By reading a particular tag on the tool, there is no way you can tell what kind of tool it is.

Sounds like you have covered the privacy concerns completely.

PAPPU: It also prevents the Tool Link system from looking out of the truck, because of the metal cage. And finally, in software, there are safeguards to make sure that only tags that pertain to this particular application are available to the systems.

And finally, there is no personal identifiable information anywhere in the system. The user’s name and any other identifying information is not necessary. We literally just use the unique ID on the tags. It is a very pure RFID application in that sense.

Last question: Does Ford have any projected range that they expect, what percentage of buyers might choose this option?

PAPPU: I can’t discuss any particulars, but broadly speaking, they are the leaders in pickup trucks. They make approximately a million new pickup trucks a year, each with an average life time of about seven years. So, there are several million potential users out there. It is a very big market.

*Editor’s Note: Since this interview took place, press reports indicate due to the gasoline price crisis, the introduction of Ford’s 2009 model year trucks may be delayed.