Parcel Tracking issues from Yemeni Bomb Scare

The discovery of two "viable" improvised explosive devices at Dubai and East Midlands airport will have significant implications for the air freight industry. The security screening procedures and technologies in Yemen clearly failed but the "track and trace" systems managed to locate and isolate the packages.

Any national postal operator or express carrier should be re-examining the functionality of their international "track and trace" systems to ensure that:

- "Proof of Posting" not only positively verifies the identity of the sender but also captures details of all the shipments that they send. The identity of the poster should be linked to the identity of the shipment.

- All shipments should be tracked at the exact point where the shipment is security cleared and the identity of the security screener should be linked to the tracking event.

- Shipments should be "Security cleared" on departure before loading onto an aircraft and also on arrival before being cleared for entry into a domestic delivery network.

- "open standard" item identifiers like "ISO License Plates" should be used that work across complicated international supply chains.

Delivery Management is a world expert in tracking technologies and would be happy to independently evaluate existing "track and trace" systems.

If you need any help or support please contact richard.wishart@del-mgt.com

Discovering the new DNA

Attended a really interesting Webinar last week organised by the Dash 7 alliance. The subject was the proposed Dash7 Network Access (DNA) standard.

In the same way that EPC Global managed to galvanise industry activity to produce a low cost tag and software infrastructure for the ISO 18000-6 air interface standard - the Dash 7 alliance is attempting to do the same for the ISO 18000-7 air interface standard.

DNA will focus on equivalent standards like Low Level Reader Protocol (LLRP) and EPC Information Services (EPCIS) but for active RFID tags. This should be a really important move - particularly if similair and complementary standards can be used for both active and passive infrastructures. Combined "active+passive" readers is definitely the future.

The nature of "active tags" is that they have a battery and normally some memory and can therefore be directly addressed. This could really get the Internet of Things moving !!

Post Expo 2010 in Copenhagen

Just back home from four very exhausting days in Copenhagen. I chaired the "Developments in RFID" technology workgroup. We had a room full room of enthusiatic delegates and some really good speakers.

Bo Helmer Larsen from Lyngsoe talked about bringing management visibility into into sorting centres. Mikko Nikkanen from UPM Raflatac explained the commercial opportunities opened up by the latest RFID tag designs. Joaquim Serrahima from AIDA Centre provided a supplier report on the very successful Global Monitoring System and their work with Correos in Spain and Catina Aghayan from the Middle East RFID Association explained her role in the Arab Triangle RFID project and how a strong user coordination is vital in RFID projects.

I took an executive decision to add an extra 15-20 minutes to the session so that we could have a really interactive Question and Answer session.

At an event like Post Expo I always take the opportunity to judge the state of the industry. The big expensive "hospitality" stands were still in evidence but I usually steer clear as you are unlikely to find much of real interest. At the other end of the scale there are the small standholders who probably have good ideas and products but nobody is visiting their stands. ( I feel really sorry for them) In the middle are the interesting technology stands (from my point of view) and they were definitely attracting the middle tier posts who need technology innovation to survive and prosper. You had to queue up to speak to the experts at these stands

It is a very difficult time for the Postal industry. Royal Mail and USPS were very noticable by their absence - maybe one or two individuals but they were keeping a very low profile. The postal delegations were all there but paired down to a small number of key decision makers - hardly any industrial tourists.

I picked up some really significant trends and will be blogging about these over the next few weeks. I will also be setting up a niche webinar programme to take forward some of these themes.

Temperature Loggers on passive RFID tags

Last week at RFID Europe my good friend Giovanni Grieco from CAENRFID http://www.caenrfid.it/ showed me his new temperature logger which is based on passive ISO 18000 6c technology. This is a really clever concept where you programme the tag prior to use and set the temperature parameters. The tag is then placed in the shipment and despatched through a coldchain network. The temperature can be read as the tag passes through an RFID gate or you can simply press a button on the tag and you get a red or green light to show whether the preset temperature has been exceeded or not.

I was chairing the RFID session at Post Expo in Copenhagen yesterday where we had a really enthusiatic audience of about 40. I had one of the CAEN tags and used it to illustrate some points during the Q&A

The postal world now has an extensive passive RFID reader network deployed. If we can persude the network operators to make some small changes we could create a temperature aware network - and be able to attract a different type cof business.

I would love to hear of any use case results from companies using Giovanni's new tags

A new addressing paradigm for the connected world

Last week's "Click" programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v2yr5 presented a very interesting case for unaddressed letters and parcels for users of social media. (Sometimes BBC iPlayer URLs are restricted to UK users only)

John Taylor from Parcel Genie, Jonathan Grubin from SendSocial and Dan Taylor from ByBox were interviewed on the article. In the same way that PayPal is used as an intermediary for payment information the use of a "trusted intermediary" for address information is possible meaning that you could use an email address on your parcel to route it to the right address in the UK.

This is particularly interesting because I am off to Post Expo in Copenhagen this week and will be attending the innaugural session of Charles Prescott's Global Address Data Association

http://www.globaladdress.org/

Google's new URL shortner produces QR codes

Google has now released its own URL shortner http://goo.gl and the really cool bit is that it automatically generates a QR (qick response) barcode. If you read the barcode above with a QR app on your smartphone using the camera it will take you directly to my website.

The link contained in the barcode is http://goo.gl/BzaQ.qr so even the top level domain is qr instead of .com or .co.uk

It sounds really simple but this could be a huge development in the market and you will start seeing QR codes being used by SMEs. In Huntingdon where I am very active in the SME community the use of QR codes has really taken off.