Europe's RFID Focus Moves to Implementation

Yani Lee, based in Taipei, Taiwan, works for the Institute for Information Industry, which supports the development of IT applications in that country. Lee, who is responsible for advising the Initiative Office for Government RFID Applications of Ministry of Economic Affairs, said she was attending LIVE! Europe to learn about innovative uses of RFID technology.

During the conference, Metro updated attendees on its cold-chain pallet-tracking tests in Hamm, Germany (see Metro Sees Progress With Its Frozen-Foods Pilot), as well as its item-tracking implementation in Essen, Germany. A military officer explained how the government of Denmark is using RFID technology to track the goods it ships to soldiers. And Victor Prodonoff, of the Aerospace ID program at Cambridge University, discussed efforts to create data standards for sharing information about aircraft parts collected via RFID.

"People have projects in mind," said Mark Roberti, editor and founder of RFID Journal, "and they're focused on how they can go ahead and do those things. They are moving to implementation, but not so much for implementation's sake or because someone is forcing them. It's 'I've got assets to track and I'm losing them' or 'I think we could be more efficient.'"

According to Itzik Parnafes, an attendee from venture capital firm Stata Venture Partners Israel, the RFID market in Europe has moved beyond the hype phase to take its place as an industry that creates value for large and small companies. Until now, Parnafes said, his company has stayed away from the RFID market because it sought to invest in companies that could turn a profit within a reasonable time frame. "Now, I think a company starting from scratch can be profitable in three to five years," he stated.

Parnafes said he attended the Wednesday morning general session presented by Microsoft in which Sudhir Hasbe, the company's product manager for BizTalk RFID, cited an RFID application used by Blue C Sushi (see Sushi à la RFID) in Seattle. The restaurant uses RFID to track how long plates of sushi stay on its conveyor belt, from which customers select individual sushi rolls. "You know RFID has arrived if a sushi restaurant is using it," Parnafes said.