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RFID – Is the time now or yesterday? Quick Links
What is RFID A year ago, I along with many others were looking forward to that year being the year that RFID really "took off". Did it happen? Is this the start of a new era? As usual the answer is not a simple yes or no, but we can honestly say that we did see a step in the right direction.
We see MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Auto-Id center working on developing a standard system to identify objects using RFID [Radio Frequency Identification]. RFID tags are built into objects like food, clothes, drugs or auto-parts, and ‘read’ by devices in the environment, e.g. in shelves, floors, doors. Their goal is a tag that costs under 5 cents and a reader for ~$100 with ~4 feet range using multiple frequencies (e.g. 13.56 MHz and 915MHz)
Introductory Welcome to RFID Innovations Conference 2001
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RFID has taken a major step forward. You can search the web and
find hundreds of web sites that deal with this as a topic.
Hundreds of manufacturers making RFID systems. We can read about
organizations like the UCC and EAN supporting an initiative
called GTAG to produce an RFID solution for global supply chain
applications involving returnable containers, asset management,
transport and logistics.
But what of NOW. The answer is easy. For those companies
that are looking for a solution to their needs, especially
if those needs involve a reusable tag, DON'T WAIT. Do it
now. We have seen some recent cases where the return on
investment has been 4-6 months for some fairly large systems
and this is a saving that your company could be having now.
With most manufacturers participating in the standards work,
you can easily get assurances from your vendor as to their
intended conformance with the proposed standards and with
this knowledge the path forward should be clear.