NCR to Begin Tagging Its Hardware

When its retail customers purchase POS systems from NCR, they can also purchase service contracts, either from NCR or from third parties. Greaves says his company often works with these third parties to provide essential product and service data about NCR products. NCR, he says, could work out a means of including these third parties in the RFID system so they could access the product and maintenance data, as well.

NCR will require its parts suppliers to tag system components before shipping them to its customer fulfillment center in Peachtree, Georgia, where the firm builds point-of-sale systems to customer specifications. Greaves is quick to point out, however, that the transition to tagged parts will not happen over night. "It takes time," he maintains. "We will have some component manufacturers up to speed quite quickly." Others, especially those whose components might be too small to tag easily, will need more time to find tags that will work.

In most cases, Greaves says, NCR will reimburse its suppliers for some of the cost of tagging their parts. His firm will also transfer some of its RFID costs, which he describes as "pennies per tag on equipment that costs thousands of dollars," to its customers. "We'll explain [to our customers and suppliers] the benefits of the tagged systems," Greaves says, adding that too much emphasis is put on the cost of RFID equipment and not enough on the business benefits the technology enables. "To date, the vision of ROI [with RFID] has been seen as the five-cent tag, rather than the pursuit of better business processes."

For NCR’s parts suppliers, these benefits include faster payment, enabled by faster and more accurate inbound receiving by NCR. According to Greaves, for retailers buying NCR equipment, using the RFID system would result in less time spent tracking down paper-based maintenance histories of the units and their components, which they might need to provide a technician during a service call. Additionally, retailers could use the RFID tags to automate how they take inventory of their assets, which could help with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

After this initial push in its retail systems division, NCR plans to expand the tagging program to track other products across its other business units, including its retail banking equipment division, through which it sells and services ATM machines. During routine inspections, NCR technicians could access information about these ATM machines and their internal components by reading RFID tags attached to them. Because they would not necessarily need to open the machines to complete service visits, this could lower the risk of technicians being harmed by someone attempting to steal the contents of an ATM.