Health Care EDITOR'S NOTE
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Don't Ignore the Benefits of RFID
RFID is delivering benefits across many industries today. In fact, so many apparel and footwear manufacturers and retailers are achieving real business benefits from RFID that we've devoted an entire event to it. The RFID Journal—AAFA Apparel & Footwear Summit features case studies from Dillard's, New Balance, Esquel, Lemmi Fashion, Falabella, Nick Tentis and others. They will share how they are improving manufacturing, supply-chain and in-store operations.
The benefits, of course, are not limited to companies in North America. In many areas, European companies are ahead of their U.S. counterparts in using RFID to drive business value. Early adopters in a wide range of industries across Europe are also realizing benefits from RFID. RFID Journal LIVE! Europe 2007 has case studies from Airbus, Container Centralen, DHL, Metro, Rolls-Royce, Sony, Vicaima, Volvo and others.
Perhaps one reason companies are reluctant to explore the benefits of RFID is because they believe it's an all-or-nothing technology—that is, you have to deploy it either throughout your operations, or not at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. The success stories being presented at our fall events almost always involve target applications with limited investments. Once these applications deliver value, the reader infrastructure can often be used to add additional benefits at little or no incremental cost.
With so much evidence that RFID can benefit companies of almost any size, and in any industry, it's hard to comprehend why some executives are still reluctant to educate themselves about the technology.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below.
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The benefits, of course, are not limited to companies in North America. In many areas, European companies are ahead of their U.S. counterparts in using RFID to drive business value. Early adopters in a wide range of industries across Europe are also realizing benefits from RFID. RFID Journal LIVE! Europe 2007 has case studies from Airbus, Container Centralen, DHL, Metro, Rolls-Royce, Sony, Vicaima, Volvo and others.
Perhaps one reason companies are reluctant to explore the benefits of RFID is because they believe it's an all-or-nothing technology—that is, you have to deploy it either throughout your operations, or not at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. The success stories being presented at our fall events almost always involve target applications with limited investments. Once these applications deliver value, the reader infrastructure can often be used to add additional benefits at little or no incremental cost.
With so much evidence that RFID can benefit companies of almost any size, and in any industry, it's hard to comprehend why some executives are still reluctant to educate themselves about the technology.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below.
READERS' COMMENTS
Don't ignore the benefits of RFID???
Hi Mark I have been reading your articles for some time and decided to finally post a comment about your latest snippet... My company provides solutions including RFID and I am of the opinion that you should be writing articles entitled 'don't ignore the complexity and total cost of delivering RFID'. If you are so convinced of the benefits and savings etc., you don;t need to constantly shirk off what are real problems and try to thunder forward regardless - If RFID was going to be what you constantly say it is, you wouldn't need to be asking questions about why companies do not want it. Company directors are not stupid and neither are business leaders. They make informed decisions about their companies (granted not always the right ones) and they try to ensure future success as much as is practicable. It is insulting to their intelligence to tell them that they don't see the 'RFID light'. Some visionaries have been sold RFID (and I specifically state that they were sold RFID and did not buy RFID) by large manufacturers and took the bait. People do not see the RFID light because the closer they look, the more they realise that it is just being over-hyped. You are contributing to the hype and this will ultimately slow the adoption process down. Every success story you have can be equalled by a larger number of RFID disasters. I would like to see some of these case studies on your website. And I mean real costly,gone out of business, type disasters. You mention that you find it befuddling that people don't spend their money on RFID???? Companies cannot afford to implement every technological advance into their companies based on a return on investment. They just don't have the money. If there is money available, then projects such as RFID go onto a list of other projects that may gain ROI and effectively has to compete internally. RFID will never win in this scenario given other proven technologies and quicker ROI. RFID has too many unknowns until you actually go to deploy it People have grown weary of 'success' stories. There are stories about how many Fortune 500 companies are implementing RFID. I am of the opinion that the advocators, manufacturers and integrators are so desperate to have statistics about how many Fortune 500 companies are using RFID that they are funded and discounted to the hilt to get the story. It is easy to get an ROI if you aren't paying for it... I compare RFID to the internet collapse of the late 1990's. RFID will survive, but there will be an RFID 'crash' that will put everything back into perspective. I would council people in the industry to be prepared for it and ensure that they are one of the survivors. My final criticism is related to joining your website as this is something that has bugged me for some time. I have been to numerous seminars over the last couple of years and they have all had feedback forms as you would expect. Any RFID 'feedback' form was a request for information about my buying power and how much am I going to spend on RFID. Joining your website was the same request for details. Is this purely a statistical quest or lead generation???
Posted By: R. Clinton 8/18/2007 at 2:34:49 AM