ISO RFID standard will help trace products in the supply chain

For reasons of safety and reliability, the importance of being able to trace products throughout the supply chain has strongly increased in recent years. The new ISO 17367:2009 standard will help manufacturers and distributors to track products and to manage their traceability thanks to standardised RF tags.

Traceability is defined as the tracking and tracing of product and information related to it at each stage of a chain of production, processing, distribution and selling. The development of radio frequency identification (RFID), including peripheral devices and their applications, is indispensable for increasing the safety and reliability of products for consumers.

ISO 17367:2009, Supply chain applications of RFID - Product tagging, defines the basic features of RFID for use in the supply chain when applied to product tagging. In particular, it makes recommendations for:

• Encoded identification of the product
• Additional information about the product for inclusion on the RFID tag
• Semantics and data syntax
• The data protocol to be used to interface with business applications and the RFID system
• The air interface standards between the RFID interrogator and RFID tag

Craig K Harmon, Chair of TC 122/WG 10, comments: "ISO 17367:2009 will provide higher level security of products worldwide using RFID technology. It will enable easy and efficient exchange of commodities in international trade and logistics."

ISO 17367:2009 is applicable to a wide range of industries and it has been elaborated in order to ensure compatibility at the physical, command and data levels with four other International Standards under the general title: Supply chain applications of RFID. International Standards within this suite are interoperable and non-interfering:

• ISO 17363:2007, Supply chain applications of RFID - Freight containers
• ISO 17364:2009, Supply chain applications of RFID - Returnable transport items (RTIs)
• ISO 17365:2009, Supply chain applications of RFID - Transport units
• ISO 17366:2009, Supply chain applications of RFID - Product packaging

These International Standards define the technical aspects and data hierarchy of information required in each layer of the supply chain. ISO technical committee ISO/TC 122/WG 10, Packaging, in collaboration with ISO/TC 104, Freight containers, developed this series of standards.

TC 122/WG 10 has undertaken a revision of this suite of standards to provide better clarity to the encoded methods to be utilised and support for sensor technology.

ISO 17367, Supply chain applications of RFID - Product tagging, is available in Australia from SAI Global.