Surviving RFID

By Gary Forger, Editorial Director -- Modern Materials Handling, 10/1/2004

Last month, I visited the Frontline Solutions event in Chicago. While the promotional materials touted the breadth of automatic data capture technologies there, it easily could have been titled "RFID all day, every day."

And as we all heard, there are plenty of issues surrounding this technology. Some of the more hotly contested areas include: standards, standards organizations, intellectual property, tag performance, read rates, privacy, data sharing, and return on investment. Even the laws of physics seem to be in dispute, or, at the very least, up for discussion. Basically, most every aspect of RFID is in play - at least for now.

"When it comes to RFID, people are trying to decide if the glass is half full or half empty," said Kevin Ashton of ThingMagic in a keynote talk. He went on to say the answer to that all depends if you're drinking or pouring. And from where he sits, "the glass is half full and we're still pouring."

Well put, if you ask me.

Here are some key points made at Frontline that are well worth keeping in mind as you go forward with this technology.

• Despite what many have said, 2005 will not be the year of RFID implementation. It will be the year of major pilot programs.
• RFID goes far beyond mandates by WalMart and others. There's a whole other world of applications from tracking livestock to managing production lines.
• Bar codes are not going away, even on RFID labels. There is an estimated $10 billion of bar code infrastructure in place.
• If there's a problem with an RFID tag, simply read the bar code on the label.
• Mandate compliance alone will not deliver value.
• RFID is all about combining effective data capture with increased product visibility and process transformation.
• Data sharing between trading partners will unlock a lot of the value of RFID.
• Don't be seduced because you hear of company x using RFID in a particular way.
• RFID is not a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
• If you are not under a mandate, now is the time to research and understand RFID and what it can do for your operations.
• Tracking products in the supply chain is not a privacy issue. But if RFID is used to collect data about people, that raises issues certain to be part of the privacy debate in the U.S. Congress.

When you think about it, all that seems to be almost self evident when taken one by one. Which just goes to show, the greatest challenge of RFID is not to get sucked into the vortex, but just take it one step at a time.