In its series of Guest Lectures & Thought Leadership programmes, PetroFed organised a session on RFID Applications in the Oil & Gas Sector on June 7, 2006 at New Delhi . The speaker was Shri T.S. Rangarajan, Head RFID Solutions, Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS).

Introducing the subject and the speaker, Session Chairman Sh. S.S. Soni, Executive Director (Optimisation), Indian Oil Corporation Limited highlighted the importance of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as an enabling technology which is impacting business applications across industries. Sh. Rangarajan, he said, has been with TCS Ltd. for the past 17 years and prior to taking up his current assignment was the Retail Practice head of TCS based at New York . His RFID Solutions team focuses on creating end to end RFID solutions for all verticals by leveraging four decades of domain experience, technology expertise, tools and assets of various practices within TCS along with identified hardware and software partners. Sh. Rangarajan has worked in a large number of consulting engagements spanning manufacturing and service sectors.

In his presentation, Sh. Rangarajan elaborated on RFID and how it works, tags and their classification, readers, middleware, applications and value chain, etc. There were illustrations from case profiles and case studies. These helped the full house of nearly three score participants appreciate the potential of the technology which can monitor and help optimise assets since, unlike bar codes, it does not need line of sight.

Participants were earlier welcomed by Director General, PetroFed, Sh. A.K. Arora who termed the lecture as an attempt to stimulate action oriented thinking on enabling technologies which can assist companies in the oil & gas sector in multifarious ways. RFID, he said, though not a new technology is now more readily affordable. The list of links provided to participants in their folders, he said, is by no means complete or comprehensive but will help in achieving greater insight into the subject.

Sh. Rangarajan responded to a large number of questions at the end of his presentation and covered specific subjects pertaining to oil & gas sector like LPG cylinder tracking, Oil Tanker and document tracking, asset tracking etc.

A vote of thanks was proposed by Sh. Y. Sahai, Director (C&M), PetroFed.

RFID Reading References

TCS RFID : www.tcs.com/rfid; RFID Journal : http://www.rfidjournal.com; RFID FAQ : http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq ; Japan Issues E-Passports : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/2224/1/1/ ; United States Sets Date for E-Passports : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1951/1/1/ ; Police Test RFID-enabled Badges : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/2191/1/1/ ; Maritime RFID Sees Wave of Adoption : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1889/1/1/ ; Avery Dennison, RSI ID Lower Price Bar :http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1887/1/1/ ; RFID News Roundup : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/1958/1/1/ ; Industrial Hoses Couple Up With RFID : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1582/; RFID Protects Liquid Assets :http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/842/; Synchronize your Supply Chain with RFID : http://rfid.knowledgestorm.com/ksrfid/search/viewabstract/67270/index.jsp ; RFID Technology & Applications : http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~sri/talks/RFID-05.ppt; Government Notification for RFID Frequency : http://www.wpc.dot.gov.in/Static/RFID%20Delicensing.doc ;'The Future is now : http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20060501/technologyreview.cfm; RFID News Roundup : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/2384/1/1/ ;RFID Journal Industry Summit :   http://www.rfidjournal.com/IndustrySummits/