Blue Vector Extends Pharmaceutical RFID Product Line With Item-Level Conveyor Tunnel

Smart RFID Tunnel Reads HF and UHF Tags

Palo Alto, Calif. – November 14, 2006 – Blue Vector Systems today announced that it has extended its RFID product line for the pharmaceutical industry to include a dual-frequency RFID conveyor tunnel with the ability to read HF-tagged items within UHF-tagged totes and containers. The new Smart Conveyor Tunnel offering builds upon Blue Vector’s introduction earlier this year of its dual-frequency Safe and Secure Smart Cabinets for drug storage and order picking.

The tunnel allows manufacturers, packagers, distributors, and retailers to verify and authenticate the contents of totes and cases carrying individually tagged items. Dual tag standards are a requirement for the pharmaceutical supply chain, in which HF tags are historically the dominant standard. Cases and totes typically carry UHF tags.
In keeping with Blue Vector’s product design philosophy, the tunnel is engineered with ease of use and rapid deployment in mind. An embedded Blue Vector Edge Manager in the tunnel manages the multiple sensors required and executes business rules in real-time as cases and items are scanned. These rules can be used to remove cases from the line, to load EPC-compliant information into backend systems, to authenticate items with the original manufacturer, and to send advance shipping notices to supply chain partners. The tunnel can be configured and monitored via a web interface provided by the Blue Vector system.

“The tunnel is a natural extension of our core mission to make wireless sensor deployments as easy as possible,” commented Nancy Anderson, Blue Vector’s CEO. “It’s a great complement to our line of network appliances, and expands our ability to offer a complete, drop-in sensor solution that integrates well with existing software systems such as SAP.”
The tunnel supports EPC Gen 1 and Gen 2 UHF tag standards. For HF, it supports the ISO 15693 and 18000-3 tag standards. Blue Vector’s Smart Conveyor Tunnel includes all components necessary for operation, including RFID readers from companies such as Symbol Technologies, a Blue Vector partner.

About Blue Vector Systems
Blue Vector was founded by researchers and software engineers from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Yahoo, and Oracle. They pooled their knowledge of new software architectures, distributed processing, and massively scalable systems to create a truly unique product offering for quickly creating and easily managing large and diverse networks of wireless sensors and devices. Blue Vector’s customers include some of the biggest names in the pharmaceutical, logistics, and retail industries. Blue Vector is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York and Bangalore, India. For more information, please visit www.bluevector.com

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