RFID

'Some companies make things happen, some companies watch things happen and some companies wonder what happened'

'RFID will be larger than Y2K. Ultimately, RFID will be a core technology deployed across the Supply Chain in most industries'

AMR Research

Introduction

RFID - Radio Frequency Identification - has long been promised as next big thing in automatic identification technology to replace the barcode which is now over 30 years old in Its retail application. RFID, however, is not a new technology. Many would trace its origins to World War 2 where radio signals were used to interrogate aircraft to establish if they were friend or foe. More recently, most of us are familiar with this technology in car immobilisers (10 years), animal tagging (14years), contactless payments (5 years) and tracking of high value items such as containers. We have also seen the technology in car tolls, vending machines, libraries and access control.

However, the momentum has suddenly increased dramatically to adopt this technology with the announcement from Walmart in USA - the world's largest retailer - that it requires its top 100 suppliers to be RFID compliant by January 2005 - less than 6 months from now. A similar announcement has been made by Target in the USA. Here in Europe, following very successful trials in its 'future store' in Dusseldorf, Metro - one of Germany's largest retailers - announced a similar roll out plan for this technology with an even tighter deadline - November 2004. Even closer to home Tesco and Marks and Spencer have been running similar pilot programmes in their stores with very encouraging results.

Another major landmark in the adoption of RFID occurred in June when after years of wrangling, standards were finally agreed by epcglobal - the governing body for the deployment of this technology in the consumer market. Finally, that other great bugbear - the tag cost - now looks to be receding with the 5 cent tag suddenly in full view. In short, with such major retailers pushing this technology, with standards for worldwide deployment agreed and with cost efficient tags in sight the momentum is building furiously. Indeed, pundits are predicting a 20 fold increase in its adoption by 2008 - just over 3 years away.

Published in Dairy & Food - Industries Magazine
Issue: July/August 2004

How does RFID differ from bar coding?

Conceptually, bar coding and RFID are quite similar; both are intended to provide rapid and reliable item identification and tracking capabilities. The primary difference between the two technologies is that bar coding scans a printed label with optical laser or imaging technology, while RFID scans, or interrogates, a tag using radio frequency signals. Because of the low cost of bar code labels, established standards, and global deployment, bar coding is widely accepted while, in general, RFID has been limited to niche applications. Furthermore, just as there are different bar code symbologies in use today, there are different RFID standards regarding the way data is captured from tags—the RF communications protocol.

Barcode RFID Tag

Will RFID replace bar codes?

These technologies are NOT mutually exclusive, nor will one replace the other. They are both enabling technologies with different physical attributes. Bar codes utilize one-way serialized and periodic data. RFID utilizes two-way, parallel, and real-time data. Leading-thinking companies are using their current bar code systems to benchmark RFID technology in order to gauge impact on performance. This baseline is a crucial measure in determining the effectiveness of a new RFID system. Separating the data aspect (EPC, for example) of RFID systems from the operational aspect is a very good way to start to learn the physical properties of RFID. The determination of when to use RFID technologies instead of bar codes should be driven by the business need and the extent to which RFID can improve an existing business process. Basically, RFID should be deployed just like any other technology—when the benefits justify the cost and effort involved in implementing it.

What is RFID?

Asset Tracking

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