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Enhancing operational resilience and safety with new tech modalities - Shifting the paradigm with Microwave Scanning
Enhancing operational resilience and safety with new tech modalities - Shifting the paradigm with Microwave Scanning

May 30, 2024

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HIGHLIGHTS

The threat landscape has been evolving regularly with pandemics, climate events, and geopolitical events creating disruptions in the way and the number of people traversing. This may open new paths for innovation where organizations are enabled with operational resilience & safety plans with tech modalities to embrace quick recovery from any disruptions.

 

CURRENT SCENARIO

While navigating between places, people often face situations where they are scanned & searched before allowing access to a secured area, for example at airports, schools, court houses, prisons, museums, or any crowded place. Screening helps keep people safe in crowded zones by identifying any hidden hazardous objects inside the baggage or boxes


Scanning Scenario 2023: Shoes off, Belts off, laptops out, chargers out, liquids in zip lock bags, all in separate trays! Frequent flyers are accustomed to this as they hear it every time they fly, and they pass through an airport security check.

Scanning is essential and touches a magnitude of applications, apart from people scanning. But the present way of conducting it has challenges in terms of customer experience & actual economic and human impact – this is creating the need for new technologies.

 

  • Scanning for Security

X-ray security screening market was valued at US$ 4.2 Bn. in 2021 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.6 % by 2027. A weak security system at airports, seaports, schools, stadiums, railway stations, and hotels may result in an increase in illegal activities as well as the threat of terror attacks. To prevent prohibited activities, efficient scanning is necessary, but sparing the annoyance of queuing time as well. This would result in a better customer experience.

  • Scanning for Quality

With 10.6% of online-bought items eventually making their way back to the retailer, it’ll come as no surprise to hear that the global reverse logistics market is estimated to be worth $821.55 billion by 2025. Hence, tracking requires efficient & faster detection of the quality of returned package.

  • Scanning for Operational Resilience

X-ray bag scanning and metal detection are time-consuming processes. Operational inefficiency due to high traffic is another bottleneck that can have a negative impact on customer experience and confidence. Building the fabric of a next generation scanning system that is independent of the customer traffic and workforce involvement can build a strong foundation for operational resilience

  • Scanning for Safety

Some scanners like backscatter and transmission x-rays use a form of ionizing radiation (though a much lower amount than in a medical scan) which can be harmful for the staff being exposed to the harmful radiations regularly. A contactless and unobtrusive screening process can help streamline operations, keep customer journeys seamless and staff safer. It would also help in creating a responsible future by identifying potential surveillance and safety issues in crowded places, along with industries like manufacturing, and mining.

 

FUTURE SCENARIO

Given a new way of scanning gets installed at the crowded zones, 5 years from now, how would the scenario change?

Scanning Scenario 2030: No more taking off your shoes, and belt, or putting liquid bottles into zip lock bags…. And no more queues… Just walk through an automated scanner lane and a microwave scanner would take care of the security check of the baggage from your luggage basket …. Cost effective and no human interventions required, so no harmful exposure to X-rays. Ensure smooth and easy journey for people and hassle- free & safer checks for admin authorities

 

TRADITIONAL SCANNING

Till date, security machines are solving this purpose by detecting materials inside luggage that may cause harm to passengers. And, not only airports, its effective in detection of objects in railway stations, bus depots, schools, museums, postal services, hotels, manufacturing factories, retail facilities, and so on, wherever there is a need for scanning the bags & baggage for identifying harmful objects.

X-rays have been the most acknowledged technology for attaining this and are used for both security and medical applications. X-ray machines use radiation to detect the presence or absence of any harmful or illegal objects inside parcels without opening them. Though X-ray machines release very low doses of radiation, the scanned bags don’t retain any radiation after scanning, and people don’t spend more than a few seconds passing through metal detectors, but these solutions are not cost-effective (when the need is high that is the throughput requirement becomes unmanageable), neither these are safe for the attending human operators who are spending longer hours in front of these radiations.

 

SHIFTING TO MICROWAVE SCANNING

An alternative to X-rays that has become talk of the town is ‘Microwave scanning’ systems. Microwave is relatively less expensive that could be customized to suit many applications and since it is non-ionizing, it would be safer as well. Microwave scanners using Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radar is a striking proposal for detecting the presence or absence of any given object in a sealed package. This is achieved through two aspects - penetrability of the UWB signal, the ability of microwave scanning to provide geometric information about the object in terms of shape and size. In case of any discrepancies between the generated and the desired object, AI based imaging is used to train the system and analyze a particular type of object. This would remove or at least lessen the need for human involvement in the screening process for each parcel.

 

APPLICATIONS ACROSS DOMAINS

Microwave scanning may be used across a multitude of applications and each of these applications may be useful across domains like logistics, retail, ecommerce, manufacturing, safety and so on:

 

  • Missing Item Detection: Detect missing items in packages before it leads to inventory pains and result in unhappy customers.
  • Item Verification: Verify item quantities without the need to open containers, and without the health hazards associated with X-ray.
  • Cube Utilization: Detect vacant space in ecommerce boxes to:
    • Identify package fill and void space
    • Save cost with reduced packaging materials
    • Have less packaging waste for the customer to dispose of
    • Reduce carbon footprint with more efficient space utilization during transportation
  • Damage Detection: Identify damaged product in packages before shipping without requiring costly manual human intervention.
  • Leak Detection: Monitor inbound and outbound shipments for leaking items that may not be possible to detect with the human eye.
  • Return Fraud Detection: Real time fraudulent item inspection in case of high volume of returns in ecommerce
  • Quality Inspection: Quality inspection of items like paints may inform at an early stage whether the required quality characteristics have been met and/or whether there is a need for action.
  • Surveillance: Crowded places are often challenged with controlling and stopping the flow of illegal items, weapons, drugs, lose lithium batteries being used inside packages or in conveyor belts. These may be detected easily using microwave scanning.

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Dr. Arpita
Insights & Foresights Strategist

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