Texas Instruments Radio Frequency ID System, Tag-it, Continues Trials for British Airways Baggage Handling.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 25, 1999--Late, lost and misrouted airline luggage may soon be a thing of the past, as British Airways continues its evaluation of a new Radio Frequency ID (RFID) based baggage handling system, now being tested in co-operation with Texas Instruments. TI today announced its participation in a series of tests, culminating in a field trial later in March.

The field trials, including TI's new Tag-it(TM) smart label technology based on its TIRIS(TM) technology, will eventually involve some 225,000 bags on flights from Manchester and Munich to London's Heathrow Terminal 1, one of the busiest air terminals in Europe.

Smart labels are ultra-thin RF identification chips that are laminated between paper to make one-use labels, tickets or tags. These labels carry a unique ID code that is used to automatically tag, sort and route bags, far faster and more reliably than manual or bar code systems that require a clear line of sight. Smart labels can also be updated on the fly, adding new data such as revised flight or routing information.

Peter Stanton, senior manager, customer service delivery at British Airways said that he was delighted to have Texas Instruments and its partners join with British Airways in the development of a "Smart Bag Tag" technology. This technology will enable the speeding up and processing of transfer baggage and help eliminate "lost luggage," thus providing British Airways with a 21st century system.

Participating with Texas Instruments in this field trial are a number of companies including the main contractor for these RFID trials, Ultra Electronics, an international leader in airport passenger and baggage tracking systems. Other participating companies include IER and Genicom, manufacturers of ticket printer systems; and Sihl, a major producer of airline luggage tags.

"The combined efforts of these technology companies, all with extensive airline management and logistics systems experience, confirms the potential for the use of RFID in this new application," said Bob Hornby, Tag-it program manager for airlines, for Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments has been working with British Airways since last year on preliminary testing and evaluation of RFID technology for baggage handling and sorting applications. RFID systems may eventually be extended to positive passenger baggage matching (PPBM) systems that reliably match passengers to their bags during boarding. PPBM systems help to match re-routed bags onto correct flights, and insure a higher degree of airline security.

British Airways is openly sharing this test data with other airlines and standards groups world-wide in an effort to accelerate the standardization and adoption of RFID-based handling and passenger matching systems internationally.

TI's Tag-it smart labels are based on its TIRIS RFID technology that over the past decade have been deployed in more than 30 million tags world-wide. TIRIS applications include automotive anti-theft systems for Ford and Toyota, Mobil Oil's successful SpeedPass(TM) automatic payment systems, and a host of security, access and automatic data capture systems world-wide.

NOTES TO THE EDITOR:

Texas Instruments Incorporated is a global semiconductor company and the world's leading designer and supplier of digital signal processing solutions, the engines driving the digitalization of electronics. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the company's products also include calculators, controls and sensors, metallurgical materials and digital light processing technologies. The company has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.

Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.ti.com.

Texas Instruments entered the radio frequency identification (RFID) market in 1991 with the world-wide introduction of TIRIS (Texas Instruments Registration and Identification System). Fusing together core competencies in advanced semiconductors, microelectronic packaging and computer system design, TIRIS has become a standard-setting technology used in thousands of object tracking and data collection applications around the world.