Led by the Japan Industrial and Medical Gases Association (JIMIGA), introduction of the cylinder management technology using the Radio Frequency (RF) tag has been on the way. It is announced that the number of cylinders bearing the RF tag reached 172 thousand in early August 2012 with the introduction at 43 locations of 6 companies including Taiyo Nippon Sanso, Air Water, Iwatani, Air Liquide, Koatsu Gas Kogyo and Koike Sanso Kogyo. This number marked a great increase of 138.9% from 72 thousand of August last year with an increase of base locations from 23 to 43.

Furthermore, JIMGA has targeted the number of RF tagged cylinders at 3.1 million by the end of March 2016, and it seems that gas manufacturers as main player will accelerate their introduction of RF tags from now on. The RF tag provides an abundant amount of information, and is characteristic in its data processing speed and batch reading of plural cylinders. In order to attain more effective work taking advantage of this function, based on actual introduction results, the gas manufacturers mainly started to put it into a practical use on a nationwide scale in 2011.

However, it is said that 15 million high pressure gas cylinders are still prevailing among not only gas manufacturers but also distributors, and 4000 enterprises are possessing cylinders. As of this August, only 1.1% of all cylinders bear the RF tag. Assuming realization of the targeted number of 3.1 million in March 2016, its percentage will still be no more than 21% of all.

In addition, the bar code system of another method for cylinder management seems to have already been introduced by 500 companies (as of April 2012) equivalent of 34% of 1,474 companies who join Zenyoren (literally All Japan High Pressure Gas and Welding Material Association). It naturally will be a subject to switch the bar code system into the RF identification tag.