A recent event in Europe and an upcoming meeting, in conjunction with RFID Journal LIVE!, bring together end users, vendors and academics to address implementation issues.
The company's new facility lets customers test readability for a variety of implementation scenarios in which multiple interrogators are deployed close together.
By midyear, the drugmaker plans to roll out a full-scale implementation, after which every bottle and case of the painkiller will carry an EPC Gen 2 tag.
A survey by ARC Advisory Group indicates that performance and price issues are keeping many manufacturing companies from launching full implementations.
A study by ChainLink Research shows a third of all manufacturers deploying RFID in response to customer mandates, though more than 40 percent of companies say they are motivated by the opportunity to improve operations.
Viviane Reding, commissioner of the EU Information Society, says the preliminary results indicate Europe needs rules and technologies for the safe and secure implementation of RFID.