Companies need to take risks with RFID
Companies need to take risks with RFID
The recent signing of the alliance between VeriSign and EAN Australia to use standards to identify any RFID tagged product in the world through a database is another significant sign that the RFID industry is about to take off in Australia, but more commitment is needed from companies around the country.
EAN owns EPCglobal Network in Australia, which is a body created to make RFID standards so that all industries can use the same technology to mark and read items.
The VeriSign EPC Start Service allows businesses to automatically find and generate real-time information about RFID-tagged products across the supply chain, based on the RFID standards made by the EPCglobal Network.
Fiona Wilson, the general manager for standards development at EAN, explained why the lack of standards and culture of risk-taking has hampered the take off of RFID in Australia and left us behind the U.S. and Europe.
"The problem is that a lot of RFID technology has been proprietary, so the companies that have adopted the technology early on have not been able to link up with RFID services provided by other companies. We have created these standards so that RFID technology can be used by many companies, which should encourage growth and further adoption of the technology.
"We are a bit behind the U.S. and Europe because we have been a bit slower in taking risks, testing the technology and implementing the standards. Walmart is set to start using the technology in the U.S. from January, 2005, and Metro AG is geared up for adopting the technology in Europe this November. We have a number of pilot projects set to take place in this country next year, which I can't talk about, but we need more commitment and imagination from other companies."
She says that now the standards are in place, companies need to start experimenting with the technology. She there have been some early adopters, who have had vision by using the RFID technology early, and they will be benefit from taking this plunge.
She added: "There should be a snowball affect as people begin to trust standards more and we sign more deals with solution providers to use the technology in a clever way. But there should be no limit to its uses, which is why companies should jump on board as soon as they can."
She says that RFID technology is much more useful than bar-code technology, because bar-code technology only records items in batches, whereas RFID technology can single out each product and attach value to it.
"For instance, say a supermarket has 100 cases of yoghurt and needs to send 50 to a supplier. The RFID technology will be able to tell the supermarket which items are passed or near their sell-by-date, so that you can send the highest quality produce away. In the U.S., I have heard of a pharmaceutical company that has a person look at each item on every shelf each week and take off the one that is expired. In the future, RFID technology could be used to tell the person which items are expired so the items don't have to be checked manually. This means that a six hour job could take 15 minutes."
She believes that companies can adapt the use of RFID to so many different uses and its just a matter of trying it out and finding the limits.
Related Article: