Apr 06, 2012At the RFID Journal LIVE! 2012 conference and exhibition, held this week in Orlando, Fla., RFID Journal announced the winners of its 6th annual RFID Journal Awards.
The winners honored were Cisco Systems, for Best RFID Implementation; Intel, for Best Use of RFID in a Product or Service; BP International, for Most Innovative Use of RFID; Bill Hardgrave, for Special Achievement; Omni-ID, for Best in Show; Hewlett-Packard Brazil, for the RFID Green Award; and Cecilia Occhiuzzi, for Best RFID Thesis.
A panel of independent judges chose this year's winners. In each category, at least five judges awarded points based on criteria established by RFID Journal. The main criteria for awards given to end users were whether the deployment broke new ground, as well as the benefits it delivered to a company or organization. The judges chose 10 finalists for the Best in Show award, and RFID Journal's editors picked the winner from those 10.
Cisco Systems was chosen for an RFID solution allowing it to track IT assets across all of its facilities worldwide, and to achieve real-time visibility into those items' locations (see Cisco Tracks IT Assets Via RFID). Intel won for a system of linking EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) passive RFID chips to Intel processors, thereby enabling new features and capabilities for computers, tablets and other electronic devices.
BP International was selected for an RFID-based control-of-work solution that makes refinery "isolation" work safer and more efficient, and that enables the company to maintain accurate records, updated in near-real time. HP Brazil won for an RFID-enabled system to track the recycling of its printers.
Bill Hardgrave, the dean of Auburn University's College of Business, and the founder of the University of Arkansas' RFID Research Center, was honored for his pioneering research on the real-world impact that radio frequency identification can have on retailing. Omni-ID won this year's Best in Show award for its Visual Tag System, which includes RFID tags with display screens for showing bar codes, images and text, enabling a company to provide workers with real-time information and instructions regarding moving assets.
In addition, RFID Journal introduced a new award this year, to recognize students performing outstanding work in the academic field. Cecilia Occhiuzzi, of the University of Roma Tor Vergata, was selected for her thesis, "Wearable and Implantable RFID Technology for Pervasive Healthcare: Human Identification and Sensing."
"This is the sixth year we have been giving out awards, and each time, the submissions get better and better," says Mark Roberti, RFID Journal's founder and editor. "This year, we had several enterprise-wide deployments in each end-user category, demonstrating that RFID technology has reached a level of maturity at which it can be used in core business applications."
