RFID tagging starts brewing

While large organizations like Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense have mandated their key suppliers apply RFID tags to their merchandise by sometime next year, the schedules keep slipping.

But interest grows. The U.S Food and Drug Administration has endorsed RFID technology as a means of eliminating counterfeited drugs and Sun Microsystems is offering an application-based solution for the pharmaceutical industry.

A Forrester Research study released at the conference reported that the lack of standards and interoperability among tags and scanners is not helping RFID proponents.

Industry consultant Michael Raynor, a director of Deloitte Research said: "RFID is not so much a disruptive technology that will replace other technologies, as it will be disruptive in many application areas". He mentioned Dexit, a Canadian company whose RFID technology lets consumers use RFID tags to access cash in the Toronto area, thereby "disrupting established credit and debit applications using today's magnetic credit/debit cards."

RFID is a technology that takes people out of the loop, explained conference organizer Mark Roberti. "While RFID is lo-tech, integration issues are not trivial and involve many parties including tag creators, reader manufacturers, software middleware developers and system integrators."

The goal is to someday be able to assure 100 percent accuracy in RFID tracking and data manipulation, but "right now, we are far from being there" said Roberti.

Several companies showed development services and platforms that they hope will speed the transition from bar code tagging to RFID tagging. Enterprises are interested in developing fully integrated RFID systems within their IT infrastructure.

Intermec Technologies Corp., an Everett, WA-based pioneer in RFID systems, showed its Intellitag RFID Ready-To-Go Pallet/Carton Evaluation Kit that enables users to create an RFID pilot in their own facility in a matter of hours versus weeks or months, according to the company.

Savi Technology announced enhancements to Savi SmartChain, a real-time supply chain event engine and network management platform. Savi SmartChain now aggregates, filters and translates data from automatic identification and data collection devices.

"Middleware is the key ingredient for facilitating and controlling the data inundations that are generated by RFID technologies, and the Savi SmartChain demonstrates some of the best thinking and experience yet developed in this area," said Michael J. Liard, senior analyst with Venture Development Corporation.

Checkpoint Systems, Inc. (Thorofare, NJ) has a prototype dual frequency Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS)/Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology system that combines both standard frequencies for EAS and for RFID in a single system. The system was developed for the Metro Group Future Store initiative, a cooperative effort between Metro Group and more than 40 partner companies from the information technology and consumer goods industries to test a range of new technologies, including RFID, in a live environment.

GlobeRanger, a middleware software solutions company in Richardson Texas, used the conference to announce its iMotion Edgeware platform which provides advanced capabilities for building and managing RFID, wireless and sensor-based solutions. Built on Microsoft's .NET Framework, iMotion allows GlobeRanger's partners and customers to rapidly develop, deploy, and manage RFID and mobile applications by providing a Software Development Kit (SDK) and Web services among other things.

Odin Technologies announced its Fully Automated System Design (FAS-D) based on DNA modeling and mapping algorithms developed at University of Virginia's Medical Automation Research Center. FAS-D models a full RFID system implementation by producing a drawing of the system, providing a tutorial for installation, tuning advice, and a procedure for tag selection and orientation.

Some emerging applications were also displayed at the conference.

Accenture Technology Labs demonstrated an online medical cabinet that recognizes who you are, knows your health concerns, reminds you to take your medication and allows you to order refills at the touch of a button. They also developed a prototype system that has a person who wants to buy a shirt he sees on another person access the needed information from an embedded RFID tag in the shirt via a wireless PDA, and order it to be delivered to his residence.

At the conference, Accenture demonstrated a fully integrated end-to-end supply chain "silent commerce" prototype that relied on tagging and tracking technologies such as RFID, sensors via continuous Internet connectivity.

Markem, a Keene, NH-based marking and coding company with roots in its 1911 shoe marking breakthrough mechanism, announced the launch of Applied Intelligence solutions for applying RFID tags and electronic product codes and managing the resultant digital identity at any point in the supply chain.

On the tag development side, Impinj, Inc. (Seattle, WA) has come out with a field rewritable chip for operation in the popular RFID UHF band that fits in a 0.6 mm (sq.) die size and is manufactured in a 0.25-micron CMOS process. Impinj's so-called Self-Adaptive Silicon eliminates costly EEPROM memory and Schottky diode process steps, thus bringing the cost down for tags.

Most observers say tags should cost 5 cents for the industry to take off. Currently the average tag cost is 20 cents.

"Nobody really knows what the tag cost should be to make it a profitable undertaking," said Roberti. "The one sure thing is that we need to make tags and readers commodity markets and no one vendor will be able to do it all. RFID today is what e-commerce was ten years ago and it will take a while for the market to come into its own."