The Visual RFID Chip: New at the MAINTAIN 2008

• Human-readable RFID

RFID chips have proven successful in identifying plant components uniquely and in supporting work tasks on site.
As their only drawback it turned out that the information stored on the RFID chips is invisible. Without the help of a PDA (a personal digital assistant), the technician could not read the information stored on the RFID chip. The new V-RFID chip (”Visual RFID chip“) of Evonik Energy Services GmbH provides the solution by not only storing data like a conventional RFID chip but by also presenting human-readable information on its display.

The integrated support of work tasks with help of PDAs will now extend beyond the supervisor’s office to the equipment on site. The display of relevant information on the V-RFID chip directly at the component will make mobile maintenance support perfect.

It is important to recognize whether technical equipment has been deactivated due to ongoing work in order to prevent accidental reactivation and subsequent hazard for humans. Conventional RFIDs and PDAs already supported technicians who performed deactivation and reactivation of equipment units in identifying the component uniquely and avoiding faulty operations. In the same work step, the display of the V-RFID chip will now present the information that work is going on. Even if more than one work task requires an individual piece of equipment to be switched off, this can easily be recognized on the display. When the last work task gets stored as being complete, the display will become blank. In switchboards where many circuit breakers are close to each other, the switched-off equipment can be identified at a glance.

The CMMS-system SI® as back-end covers the process to produce work permits. With the module “ Mobile Work Permits”, the computer support now reaches up to the equipment in the field. In a similar fashion, the module “Mobile Recurrent Measures” supports maintenance work. In this case the V-RFID chips will display information about the most recently performed maintenance.

With SI® as back-end system and its modules for mobile maintenance, Evonik offers an integrated system which allows rapid implementation of new projects. The related investment will typically pay back in about one to two years. In addition to the SI®-system, the mobile maintenance solutions also support the SAP-system as back-end to allow continuous usage of potentially existing IT infrastructure.