The Air Transport Association of America, Inc. (ATA) promulgates Spec 2000 RFID requirements for aerospace applications. Today, the majority of leading aerospace suppliers achieve compliance by placing RFID tags on critical components. Airbus currently requires that 2,000 to 3,000 parts of the new Airbus A350 XWB have RFID tags! It is anticipated that Boeing will also impose a similar requirement soon for suppliers to their 737 and 777 aircraft.

With the continued innovations in RFID technology, the adoption of ID Integration RFID solutions will be critical for suppliers to succeed in the aerospace industry. Airbus requires the use of automated data collection for marking or tagging of critical aircraft parts and continued tracking of all maintenance or servicing for each part’s lifetime.

There are numerous benefits provided by ATA Spec 2000 RFID systems integration, including:

✓ Complete history of documented maintenance/service across all organizations
✓ Lower cost of documentation for compliance
✓ Life-cycle limited tracking and optimization of critical parts
✓ Less data entry errors & simplified analysis and reporting
✓ Spec 2000 RFID Birth Record, creates a master record for full-circle traceability

The use of RFID technology has also been very beneficial in some additional industrial applications; including the printing of RFID shipping labels to meet the Department of Defense MIL-STD-129 military shipping label requirement. These tags are used to provide a list of contents for a particular shipment as well as some basic information related to the shipment. This data may include general IUID information such as the order info, product description, type of packaging, physical characteristics, and carrier among other fields.

Within ATA Spec 2000, RFID Gains Prominence
RFID Tags Provide Many Benefits
Airbus leads the way with RFID tag deployment
RFID technology benefits a wide range of business sectors