This week, we unveiled the final lineup of speakers for RFID Journal LIVE! 2009, our seventh annual conference and exhibition, being held Apr. 27-29, in Orlando, Fla. (see RFID Journal LIVE! 2009 to Feature More than 50 End-User Case Studies). This year’s agenda will feature more than 50 end-user case studies, highlighting continued growth in RFID adoption. The case studies cut across many industries, including aerospace, apparel, consumer packaged goods, defense, food, government, health care, logistics, manufacturing, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and retail.
Early adopters, such as Simon Langford of Wal-Mart, and Milan Turk and Roberta Teran of Procter & Gamble, will take part in panel discussions to talk about their real-world experiences with radio frequency identification. RFID experts, such as the University of Arkansas‘ Bill Hardgrave, GS1 EPCglobal US‘ Ken Traub and XIO Strategies‘ Jamshed Dubash will share their insights. And technology leaders, including Motorola, IBM and Microsoft, will discuss how their latest products and services are benefiting specific customers.
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The presenters will cover a wide array of RFID applications, so attendees will be able to learn from someone who has actually deployed the technology to address the same problems they wish to solve. End users will discuss animal tracking, asset optimization, complying with item-level tagging requirements, creating e-pedigrees, food traceability, inventory optimization, logistics management, tracking data center assets and work in process, waste management, yard management and other applications.
Kimberly-Clark, for instance, will explain how the company improved its yard management with radio frequency identification, achieving a return on its investment in approximately nine months. DePuy (a division of Johnson & Johnson) will explain how it employed RFID to reduce the cost of processing a shipment of medical implants from 10 to 30 minutes, down to only a minute. And Monsanto will discuss how it improved transaction accuracy and speed, producing almost real-time visibility of its inventory.
It’s tremendously valuable to hear what those in your industry are doing, but LIVE! also offers another invaluable opportunity—to hear what’s going on outside your industry. Why should you care? Because a manufacturer seeking to track and maintain assets, for instance, could benefit from hearing how Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare or Providence Health Care Systems did just that. And a consumer packaged goods company could save money by deploying a data center tracking solution similar to that which Bank of America‘s William Conroy will describe.
While some companies are cutting back on travel, there are still many that understand the value of learning how to use a powerful emerging technology, like RFID, to lower short-term costs and gain a long-term competitive advantage. Just look at which companies and organizations are sending representatives to the event (view the current list), and you’ll know which companies are still moving forward despite the current economic downturn.
I hope to see you in Orlando in three weeks. And if you sign up for our free consultations, I’ll point you to the sessions I think you’d benefit from the most—though I should warn you, there will be a lot of them!
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.