Workgroup discusses RFID tyre tag standards

Specialists in the field of radio frequency identification (RFID) and experts from the tyre and wheel industries met in Brussels earlier this month to discuss proposed international standards for RFID tyre tags. This first meeting of the ISO/TC31/WG10 Workgroup was held between 11 and 14 July and put flesh on the bones of four standards initially drafted in China with input from Mesnac. The Workgroup was convened by Dong Lanfei, an engineer within Mesnac’s Internet of Things business unit, with Pierre Loiret from Michelin acting as co-convenor.

The four standards are: RFID tyre tags, embedding methods for RFID tyre tags, testing methods for RFID tyre tags and coding for RFID tyre tags. The four draft international standards were initially submitted to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in June 2015 and put to the vote within ISO member countries. The three-month public vote resulted in the four standards gaining sufficient support to secure the ISO’s approval to start the project on 6 October 2015. The ISO/TC31/WG10 Workgroup was established soon afterwards.

The meeting in Brussels was attended by 24 experts from China, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and USA, and enjoyed support from the European Tyre and Rim Technical Organization (ETRTO), the National Technical Committee 19 on Tyres and Rims of Standardization Administration of China (SAC/TC19) and the Association Française de Normalization (AFNOR). The protagonists shared their opinions and suggestions for the four draft standards, and reached a number of consensuses. The next meeting of the ISO/TC31/WG10 Workgroup is expected to take place in December, at which time the workgroup experts will continue their discussion and review of the four draft RFID standards, with the aim of progressing from the workgroup draft stage to the committee draft stage.

Mesnac’s involvement in the standards project stems from its stated commitment to promote and accelerate the application of RFID technology within the tyre industry; the company states that the four standards are the first batch of standards from China’s tyre industry to have been officially approved by ISO and become the subject of an ISO project. The four Mesnac-drafted standards are expected to become the first ISO standards to cover the use of RFID tags within the tyre industry.