By Samuel Greengard

Oct. 1, 2004—When the Auto-ID Center proposed an “Internet of Things”—a world where every manufactured object has an embedded RFID tag and is connected to a network—it conjurred up visions of corporate nirvana. Companies would be able to track every part, every bin of raw materials and every product through a superefficient global supply chain, reducing costs and boosting productivity. And they would be able to automate many routine supply chain and manufacturing tasks.


That dream may appeal to companies, but it represents a possible nightmare for workers. The whole point of RFID is to take people “out of the loop.” In the short term, it means replacing workers who scan bar codes with tags and readers. In the long term, it could mean replacing employees with robots that can distinguish parts, customize products and react to new situations with almost as much flexibility as a human. Conceivably, the only people who would be needed in manufacturing plants, warehouses and distribution centers would be technicians to repair the machines and computers when they break down.

Research into how RFID can be used to automate factories and warehouses is already underway. At the Auto-ID Lab at England’s Cambridge University, research director Duncan McFarlane has begun to assemble robots that can tackle the entire spectrum of the manufacturing process—from machining to product assembly to packing—and ensure that the right products wind up in the right boxes every time. If parts are misplaced, the robots can pick them from those bins and move them to the correct ones. McFarlane says that the technical roadblocks for developing highly automated factories with RFID technology are likely to fall within a few years.

RFID is already having a small impact on jobs. Consumer packaged goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble was able to reduce the number of forklift operators at a manufacturing plant in Spain after introducing an RFID system. Ford Motor Co. reports a 10 percent labor savings at its Sterling Heights, Mich., manufacturing plant as a result of RFID. And NYK Logistics, a Long Beach, Calif., firm that manages shipping for 11 different steamship lines and routes goods to retail giant Target, reduced labor demands when it started tagging all incoming containers and trucks; it now knows where everything is at any given moment, so fewer people are needed to locate trailers in its large distribution yard.