Incora has folded RFID into the Total Chemical Management Information System (TCMIS) behind its Chemical Management Services offering, and reports a 97% reduction in cabinet scanning cost as a result. The announcement, dated 11 July 2024 on the company’s own newsroom, describes a deployment already running on an active production line rather than a proof of concept still looking for a home.
Incora, the trading name of Wesco Aircraft Hardware Corp, manages production chemicals on behalf of manufacturers. TCMIS is the system of record behind that service: what is in stock, where it sits, how old it is, who drew it and what happened to whatever was left. Adding RFID does not change what the system is for. It changes how the data gets into it.
“I am beyond excited to announce the launch of Incora RFID solutions into our world-class chemical management offerings,” said Daniel Gubichuk, President of Global Chemicals. “With the invaluable support of a major aerospace OEM partner, we have proven successful in implementing this technology on an active production line and are bringing it to the market today.”
Why cabinet scanning costs so much
A chemical store on an aerospace production line is not a shelf of identical parts. It is hundreds of individually date-controlled containers, many refrigerated or frozen, each with its own batch number, receipt date and expiry date. For adhesives and sealants pulled out of a freezer there is also an out-life clock that starts the moment the material warms up. Keeping that record honest means physical stock checks, done again and again.
With barcodes, that is a person opening a cabinet, lifting out containers, turning each one until the label faces the scanner, and putting it back. Line of sight is the whole cost. Every container has to be handled individually, and in a chilled or frozen store the operator is working in the cold against a clock of their own. Multiply that by the cabinets across a site and the number of checks a month, and counting becomes a serious recurring labour line.
What RFID changes about the problem
RFID removes the line of sight requirement, which is precisely why it suits this job. A tagged cabinet can be read in bulk in a single pass with the containers left where they are, so a stock check stops being a handling exercise. Identity also survives conditions that finish off a printed label: a barcode wiped with solvent, smeared with sealant or frosted over in a freezer stops scanning, while a tag carries on responding.
Part-used containers matter here too. Production chemicals are routinely drawn, used partly and returned, and a system that only knows a container left the cabinet is not really a stock system. Per-container identity with a read history tells you the container came back, when, and how long it spent outside controlled storage.
Shelf life, out-life and scrap
Incora names scrap management, shelf-life control and regulatory compliance as the services improved by the change. Those three are one problem seen from different angles. Aerospace adhesives, sealants and resins carry hard expiry and out-life limits, and material that breaches them is scrapped rather than used. That costs twice over, once for the material and once for the disruption of a line waiting on a replacement.
The defence is first-expired-first-out, enforced rather than merely written into a procedure. That needs per-container identity and a dependable read history, so the oldest still-good container goes out first and material approaching its limits is visible before it crosses the line rather than after. The same record evidences compliance to a customer or an auditor, showing when each container was received, stored, issued, returned and disposed of, which is the traceability aerospace and defence supply chains expect as standard.
What has not been disclosed
The announcement is light on engineering detail, and it is worth being straight about that. It does not state a frequency band or air interface, name a tag or reader, or identify a technology partner. The major aerospace OEM partner is not named, and there is no figure for how many cabinets, sites or customers the rollout covers, beyond RFID running on one active line with further customer deployments being scheduled. As general industry practice, chemical cabinets and point-of-use stores are commonly handled with UHF systems for the bulk read range they offer, but Incora has not said what it used here and it should not be assumed.
The headline figure needs the same care. The 97% is a reduction in cabinet scanning cost, reported alongside improved accuracy. It is not a claim about scanning time, headcount or inventory error rate.
The scale behind the number
Incora calls itself the largest provider of chemical management services, moving and managing millions of containers of product through more than one million square feet of chemically compliant warehouses and into thousands of point-of-use locations on complex production lines, serving aerospace, defence, automotive, agricultural and construction, industrial and electronics customers. At that volume, the cost of a single cabinet scan is the whole argument.
