What’s next for RFID?

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 2/14/2005

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky had a simple explanation for his success. While everyone else was chasing the puck, he skated to where the puck was going next.

The same strategy might apply to the adoption of RFID. For nearly two years, most of the chatter has been about mandates in the retail supply chain. That’s chasing the puck. We wondered where the RFID puck is going next.

One answer is mobile resource management. That means using both passive and active RFID technologies to track people, work-in-process, returnable containers and vehicles in a close-loop supply chain.

Proponents say resource management makes sense for a very simple reason. “There’s a clear ROI,” says Mike Dempsey, vice president, corporate strategy and business development, RedPrairie (262-317-2000).

Take reusable containers. “Most companies lose from 4 to 15% of their returnable containers a year,” says Dempsey. “If I know where my assets are, I can preclude losing them. And if I know where they are, I can pre-deploy them to where they’re needed, which reduces the number of containers I need.”

To track mobile assets in a closed-loop supply chain, RedPrairie is marrying its existing software with the low-cost passive RFID tags being developed for retail supply chain solutions.

Other solutions take advantage of active, re-usable RFID tags. Ford, for instance, is using a mobile resource management solution to track finished vehicles before they’re loaded onto a trailer. “Every vehicle gets an active tag on the rearview mirror as it rolls off the line,” says Matt Armanino, senior vice president of corporate development for WhereNet (408-845-8500). “Dwell times in the yard have fallen from five days to half a day per shipment. And since Ford has visibility into the quality hold area, they almost never ship out a vehicle with a known problem.”

“These are not change-the-world applications,” Armanino adds. “These are operational problems that can be solved today with active RFID technology, and begin to show a return in months, not years.”