This contrasted with the apprehensive mood of many at last year's inaugural event. Last year, many companies from a diverse group of industries that have been developing or deploying RFID systems were primarily concerned with meeting RFID mandates made by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the U.S. Department of Defense. While the supply chain continues to be a driving factor for the momentum in RFID, companies also are looking to use RFID in more focused applications where incremental returns on investment may be obtained.
While supply chain tends to be far-ranging and disparate (open loop), focused, localized applications (closed loop) can provide such incremental justification for the RFID investment. These applications include warehousing, theft detection, asset location/tracking, people location, mobile payments, in-process inventory tracking, repair and maintenance, and luggage tracking.
Yet another change has been the remarkable interest in this technology by enterprises that weren't affected by any of the mandates -- these organizations are rapidly educating themselves on using RFID to gain a competitive edge or for solving a business problem. For them, the excitement stemming from the rapid reduction in RFID tag and reader prices -- along with standardization -- provides justification in trying out limited pilot studies.
The applications in which companies are inserting RFID are typically niche-oriented with limited budget needs as opposed to a mandated supply chain. They are typically closed-loop, can have measurable results in the short term and can be deployed in phases.
For example, equipment renters are looking to perform check-in, check-out and security functions with RFID technology to reduce labor costs. Hospitals are investigating pilot studies on tracking of staff and patients to better utilize their resources and reduce incorrect medication administration. Airports/airlines are tracking baggage with tags to reduce losses associated with lost baggage. Some aerospace companies have started to tag and track high-value components of their aircraft.
Companies are starting to use writable RFID tags for automatic tracking of maintenance status on products to reduce human errors in data entry. Warehouses are piloting RFID-based solutions to monitor, track and find warehoused goods. A common challenge reported by these companies is justifying the business case for RFID.
This optimism isn't without caution, however. Concerns about privacy and security persist. Privacy becomes important if a customer's information is stored on the tag. Today, this issue is alleviated by having the tag contain no data other than an ID and a pointer to a secured firewalled database containing information about the item tagged.
Security concerns revolve around the ability to spoof tags to overwrite the data in tags, overwrite the tag ID or sniff/modify data while it's in transit through the air. These concerns are alleviated by controlling the physical environment so that malicious users can't access the tags. This is relatively easy in closed-loop situations.
In open-loop situations such as a supply chain, the tags are typically moved along with the products all through the supply chain, requiring higher levels of security. As with the Internet, security is a moving target. Security needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. For instance, having trusted shippers of goods helps alleviate some security concerns.
At the forum, the WINMEC research group demonstrated an edge-of-the-network RFID technology that's independent of protocol (such as EPC or ISO), frequency (such as UHF, HF or LF), hardware (different vendors, readers and tags) and RFID-generation. It's called WinRFID Version 1.0 and was developed in the WINMEC RFID Lab, which linked hardware from diverse vendors into a single infrastructure that could be distributed across multiple subnetworks and locations.
The group demonstrated different applications that could be driven by RFID or RFID-sensor technology. These included supply chain, retail, warehousing and check-in/check-out of boxed goods and books. Based on feedback from the forum participants, it appeared that the technical challenges are similar across different industries. However, the business challenges in each industry are quite different.
Judging by the RFID forum and by the industry-collaborative projects that UCLA-WINMEC has been involved with in the past year, one of my conclusions is that there are three critical components to an RFID system deployment:
- Technology decision: Decision on RFID technology that includes hardware, middleware and application software.
- Engineering practice understanding and modification: An understanding of how the technology will work in the enterprise's engineering setting and how insertion of the RFID technology into the engineering practice will be accompanied by changes both to the technology as well as to the engineering practice itself.
- Business process understanding and modification: This involves understanding and justifying insertion of RFID into the business process, which may also need to be changed, including how the RFID investment is justified in the modified business process.
Involving as many different organizations in the corporation upfront in the decision-making process allows for better and more informed decisions and also allows for a somewhat longer-term planned vision and strategy for the insertion of RFID into the enterprise's functions.
Since RFID is a horizontal technology that could help different organizations in their business functions, getting broad involvement upfront allows for spreading the cost and the risk of the project deployment.
Eventually, it's the combination of technology, engineering and business decisions that will allow smooth and successful deployment of RFID in the enterprise. Bringing these three functions together is the core topic of discussion at the next UCLA RFID Industry Forum on Oct. 26, 2005.
Autor: Rajit Gadh
Quelle: Computerworld, 06.04.2005
