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Manufacturing EDITOR'S NOTE
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Understanding RFID's Role in an Enterprise
RFID has its limitations, of course. In some cases, RFID needs to be integrated with related technologies—such as bar codes, GPS, infrared and ultrasound—in order for companies to achieve total business visibility. But these technologies assume a supporting role to RFID, because on their own, they can not come close to tracking the wide array of things a passive and active infrastructure can cover. 2D bar codes require too much human labor. GPS doesn't work indoors, and can not be used on smaller items. Infrared is unable to penetrate most packaging materials, so you can't read tags on things within a box, or piled one on top of another. And ultrasound is too expensive to be used on billions of items.
But by meshing these technologies and using automated software reporting tools, companies will be able to manage their assets, inventory, tools, vehicles and so forth, as effectively as they manage the production equipment on their manufacturing lines. They'll also be able to protect the food and drug supply chains, reduce counterfeiting, improve recycling, enhance the customer shopping experience and make people's lives better.
That's why I'm more passionate about RFID today than I was when I launched RFID Journal in 2002. I'm not frustrated that companies have been slow to adopt RFID. I understand it's a developing technology, and that businesses are cautious with their investment dollars. What's more, I realize it will take years for companies to build out an effective total business visibility platform. But the good thing is, if businesses have the right vision, they can start small, achieve a return on investment, and build on the infrastructure with each phase paying for the next.
RFID is going to be an essential part of the corporate infrastructure required to run an effective 21st-century business. This is the vision journalists, analysts and RFID vendors should be communicating to businesses globally.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or click here.
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But by meshing these technologies and using automated software reporting tools, companies will be able to manage their assets, inventory, tools, vehicles and so forth, as effectively as they manage the production equipment on their manufacturing lines. They'll also be able to protect the food and drug supply chains, reduce counterfeiting, improve recycling, enhance the customer shopping experience and make people's lives better.
RFID is going to be an essential part of the corporate infrastructure required to run an effective 21st-century business. This is the vision journalists, analysts and RFID vendors should be communicating to businesses globally.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or click here.
READERS' COMMENTS
RFID enabled?
Is RFID journal RFID enabled? I would be interested to know how RFID is impacting your business?
Posted By: B. NONNEMAN 11/09/2009 at 5:45:10 AM
RFID-enabled
It's a good question. We have not deployed RFID because we are about as close as you can come to a virtual enterprise. We have no reusable containers, parts, vehicles or inventory to track. We have some assets, such as laptops, printers and so on, but since we are only 12 full time people and half of the people work out of home offices, these assets don't need to be tracked with RFID. Our Web site is hosted in a third-party data center in California, so we have no data center assets to track. I'd like to track the amount of time people spend at their desks, but I'm afraid the probably wouldn't be too pleased about that. ;-)
Posted By: M. Roberti 11/09/2009 at 10:32:45 AM
CEO, Co-Founder
Mark, We are totally in agreement with you about the long term potential for improved and more efficient supply chains, manufacturing operations and customer facing solutions. However our approach to communicating that potential value proposition to business executives is different than what you appear to be advocating. We are one of the companies that downplays the emphasis on RFID. And we believe for good reason. By focusing on the business problem to be solved, we can engage the senior business executives whose lives would be made better if we can deliver on a solution to their problem, weather it be increased inventory accuracy to get at the excess inventory problem you mentioned in your post or for any of a myriad of other things that real-time visibility into a products where abouts and its movement can provide improvement. But leading with and placing emphasis on RFID as a technology immediately relegates the discussion to the IT group. They are not the decision makers. They do now own the problem. They assist the business executives when evaluating which potential solution fits best into their current technology infrastructure. But they typically are not the thought leaders that will introduce the changes necessary within an organization to embrace a full scale process re-engineering needed to get the most out of an RFID enabled solution. Now before all of the IT leaders out there take umbrage with this remark, there have and continue to be very forward thinking IT leaders sprinkled within organizations big and small. We see their names and hear their presentations at conferences because they represent the minority of companys, early adopters if you will, of RFID enabled solutions. However, they are not the eyes and ears of the mass market that we all need to sell into to see RFID enabled solutions go mainstream. Persisting to place emphasis on RFID only serves, at least in our experience, to create an artificial barrier between the message that we are trying to communicate and the business executives who are in need of hearing the message. So while being truly appreciative of everything that the RFID Journal and especially you Mark, are trying to do to advocate for the advancement of the technology, we believe it is time to lead our discussions with non technology charged language. And oh, by the way, we couldn't deliver the value to you mr and mrs customer without RFID.
Posted By: P. Grimlund 11/13/2009 at 8:59:37 AM
Leading with RFID
Thanks for the note. I need to clarify what I'm talking about. I don't advocate leading with RFID. When we write articles, we never write, XYZ corp has deployed an active/passive or other system. Here's what it does. We always talk about the business problem the company had an how RFID was used to solve it, or how a specific benefit is achieved. What I am saying is that the RFID industry needs to educate people about everything RFID does, so end users realize that the visibility it provides can do a lot of different things for them. The problem I see with your approach is you have to know what business problem the company has before you can engage senior business people. If every senior business person in the world understood the value of the visibility RFID provides, millions of senior business people would be coming to RFID vendors asking for help with myriad business problems. Until we get there, RFID will remain a technology that is used to solve one-off problems, rather than an infrastructure that can be used to achieve visibility across the enterprise. So to be clear, I understand that vendors need to sell product today, but I also think they need to simultaneously explain the bigger capability the RFID provides. Airbus gets it, but few other companies do.
Posted By: M. Roberti 11/13/2009 at 2:19:54 PM