New RFID Technology Helps Kraft, P&G, Kimberly-Clark Go the Distance

"Our primary use case for the reader is reading case tags, versus just pallet tags, on pallets moving through dock doors," Morrow explained. In tests, P&G consistently found that STAR was able to read case tags on pallets moving through five dock doors simultaneously, with the pallets carrying a mix of cases, some containing products that tend to interfere with RF signals—such as Cascade dishwasher powder, which has foil-lined packaging.

When Kimberly-Clark first started testing the Mojix system last year, Onderko said, the company did not yet have a strong use case for the technology, though it eventually identified one. "We were having a hard time tracking tagged pallets of finished goods moving from a production facility to a warehouse," he says, "so we [installed the reader to monitor tags moving through] a few outbound dock doors. Honestly, it worked so well we got bored with it after a while, so we got creative and started tracking raw materials and the lift trucks that move them around the facility. This way, we could track the location of the raw materials and marry that with data on the asset [lift truck] carrying them. We are looking forward to developing more use cases for the reader."

All three panelists indicated their main focus for the STAR system would be leveraging the significantly long read range it provides, relative to conventional readers, in order to lower the incremental costs of expanding RFID reader coverage currently around just a handful of dock doors, to many or all dock doors within a facility. "This is the choice for driving scale across dock doors," Pollock stated. None of the three companies have conducted focused use-case testing of the STAR reader that exploits its ability to locate tags in 3-D, though Morrow said P&G has done small-scale location testing.

Doug Wallace, chief operating officer of RFID solutions provider Xterprise, also joined the panel. Wallace said his company sees "massive opportunities" for deploying the Mojix hardware for a wide range of applications. As examples, he cited reading battery-assisted Gen 2 passive tags attached to objects in outdoor settings, as well as monitoring IT assets within a data center and tracking inventory in retail stores.

Linda Prosser, Mojix's VP of corporate marketing, said no pricing information on the STAR system has yet been released. According to Prosser, the company is currently working with RFID systems integrators to develop sales channels for the product.