Flying High with RFID in Aviation

John Shoemaker is President of Shipcom Wireless of Houston, a software solutions provider serving markets around the world. He has been in high technology for 35 years with global responsibility for managing teams in start-up, small, medium and large corporations, and specifically including Vice President positions with Intermec's Amtech subsidiary, TransCore, Matrics and Symbol Technologies.

He has managed sales and markets for active, battery-assist passive and passive RFID tags in applications for baggage tracking/sortation, electronic toll collection (tolltags), logistics, cargo, vehicle access control.

While at Matrics, he crafted the strategy, recruited and lead the teams that won the 5-year, near 100 million tag orders from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and from the Airport Authority of Hong Kong, both being mission critical operations. He also supported a dozen pilots at airports around the world with the DHS/TSA/FAA for implementing passive, UHF RFID for aviation in both baggage and cargo applications. The data was made available to support IATA to make passive, UHF RFID the worldwide recommended practice for aviation.

Shipcom Wireless has become a leading provider of integrated supply chain execution software solutions focused on the RFID and enterprise mobility markets. Shipcom's proven, open standards platform, CATAMARAN, is a server-based solution that captures, filters, aggregates, transforms, and routes data from multiple devices such as RFID readers and barcode scanners and integrates it directly with enterprise systems such as Oracle, Provia, SAP and various legacy systems. Its software solution also includes reusable application libraries and more than 100 user-friendly development tools, developed from eight years of supply chain experience, that enable customers to easily and quickly configure the CATAMARAN platform to their specific needs. www.shipcomwireless.com

o What are the critical components to a successful RFID implementation for aviation? To include baggage, passengers and cargo.

o With IATA doing lots of research and justification now done proving the case for RFID, what does this mean for any one airport or airline?

o As we all know, solving problems will not be done by studying the hardware. Solving problems is all about architecting a solution that drives high value for the organization.

o Any answer must be scalable and extensible to support multiple applications using multiple data capture devices and connecting them to multiple aviation IT Systems.