News and Media: RFID News

RFID technology is conceptually easy to understand. So is data warehousing, and we know there's a lot to data warehousing. RFID is a tagging technology that uses electronic transmitters, or backscatters, containing (usually) a standard code representing the item that it is attached to - whether that is a shirt, an automobile, a cow, a bird, a computer, a pallet of goods or a passport. The tags are read by readers, which are usually in a fixed location.

Evidencia LLP (distributor/integrator) won this award for cold chain management of temperature and delivery of avocados, an application spanning 6,000 miles—from the Rio Blanco farms (end user) in Chile to the end customer in California, a subsidiary of Green Giant. Using RFID-enabled temperature logging technology from Evidencia’s affiliate, Information Mediary, the pilot produced 100 percent read rates despite challenging temperature and humidity conditions.

CMP Technology has added award winners and all applicants & their partners to the RFID Excellence in Business Awards website.

RFID is still an emerging solution, but it's quickly becoming a realistic answer to the challenges of many businesses, and it must be implemented by each company on its own terms. As I mentioned in my first article on this subject, the RFID industry is rapidly changing. This statement still holds true today. Companies looking to adopt the technology must understand the truth behind the myths.

In any rapidly emerging market sector, there are those that make bold initiatives but miss their targets and there are those that quietly create profitable businesses. So it is with RFID, where many companies are reviewing their strategies after disappointment while others are succeeding. However, as far as the press and the analysts are concerned, profit is a taboo subject. Until now.

The current buzz is about item-level tagging, in essence implementing a numbering scheme and fitting a unique serial number onto every imaginable item. Following are some aspects of the technology and its possible applications.

Wal-mart's press announcement states that they realized "a 16 percent reduction in out-of-stocks". Wal-mart also publishes on their website "that the biggest benefit (of RFID to consumers) will be better merchandise availability". If that's true, then the measure in improvements to out-of-stocks is import, not only to the retailer, but to the consumer.

A little over a year ago, my team was helping a large retailer by designing the read points for different areas of their distribution center. The most difficult challenge we faced was one of the conveyor read points. We didn't have to just read all the RFID tagged cartons that travel on the conveyor, that would have been easy in this particular environment.

On January 1st 2005 Wal-Mart.s mandate to top suppliers, announced some 18 months ago, came into effect. Here we report, after two months into the year, what has happened so far.

A new market research report covering RFID from 2005 to 2015, researched by IDTechEx, reveals some surprising new disruptions. The bottom line is that this year's global market for RFID including tags, systems and services is $1.94 billion but it will be driven by demand and new laws to $26.90 billion in 2015.

Item level RFID is the Mount Everest of RFID, with by far the largest potential at up to ten trillion tags yearly as most barcodes are replaced. Infrastructure, software and services to make it happen are likely to approach one hundred billion dollars yearly across the world - roughly the sum that will be needed for the tags.

IDTechEx announces that its RFID Knowledgebase now exceeds 1000 case studies of RFID in action, covering activities of over 1250 companies in action. Chairman Dr Peter Harrop said, .RFID is now so ubiquitous that few participants know of all the activities in their chosen application, let alone the reasons behind their success or failure.

RFID systems consist of the following components

A smart label is a flat responsive device that is usually electronic. Most electronic devices are becoming flat because it is easier to lower their cost and fit them in awkward places such as packaging but we are not defining smart labels as generally as this.

Passive, semi-passive and active tags

Read only, read/write and WORM tags

Tag shape