Jan. 1, 2004—Every January for the past five years, someone has predicted that radio-frequency identification technology will finally take off. And invariably, that person has been wrong. This year’s prognosticator may feel assured that the time for widespread RFID adoption has finally arrived, now that Wal-Mart and the U.S. Department of Defense have asked their suppliers to start tagging pallets and cases in 2005. Don’t bet on it.

Given all the hype and hoopla and genuine progress in 2003, it’s not surprising that expectations have been raised for RFID technology and what it can do for businesses. But the industry is still too immature to be able to meet them.

For sure, there will be good news. Several more large retailers will likely follow the lead of Wal-Mart and Tesco and announce that they, too, are going to track pallets and cases with RFID tags. And there will be some high-profile investments by venture capitalists in RFID startups. But there will be plenty of bad news. Here’s why.

EPC specs are evolving
The Electronic Product Code developed by the Auto-ID Center has been handed off to EPCglobal, a joint venture set up by the Uniform Code Council and EAN International to commercialize the technology. But the organization’s efforts will be slow to produce results at first because EPC specifications aren’t complete. EPCglobal committees are working on mapping EPC numbers to Global Trade Item Numbers and other identification schemes, such as the DOD’s Unique Identification number.

EPCglobal’s Hardware Action Group is working on a second version of the Class 1 protocol. This is not a minor upgrade. Class 1, Gen2 will be a complete overhaul that aims to achieve a global standard (see “The Standard Problem,” page 8). It will take time for EPC specifications to mature.