Jan 22, 2014RFID Journal announced today that leaders from Airbus and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) will join executives from Marks & Spencer (M&S) as keynote presenters at RFID Journal LIVE! 2014, the company's conference and exhibition focused on radio frequency identification (RFID) and its many business applications.
LIVE! 2014, which will be held on Apr. 8-10, at the Orange County Convention Center, will open with a keynote address presented by Kim Philips, head of packaging at Marks & Spencer, a leading retailer in the United Kingdom, and Richard Jenkins, the retailer's RFID program head. M&S expanded its use of RFID technology last year, and plans to have all of its apparel and home goods tagged by this spring (see Marks & Spencer Rolls Out RFID to All Its Stores and Marks & Spencer Leads the Way). The presenters will share why their company expects the technology's future potential benefits to provide greater visibility and accuracy of all stock at the item level—from when goods leave a supplier to when they move through the distribution chain and into stores—as well as an opportunity to reduce the costs of annual stock-taking and the loss of margin associated with excessive markdowns, theft and fraud.
Carlo K. Nizam, the head of value chain visibility at Airbus—which won the 2008 RFID Journal Award for best implementation (see Profits in Motion)—will share how his firm has been pioneering best practices in RFID's adoption by deploying the technology as "business radar" across all aspects of its operations, including supply chain logistics, transportation, manufacturing and aircraft in-flight operations (see Airbus Leads the Way). This approach, which leverages a passive and active RFID tag infrastructure for multiple applications operating on a common software platform, has yielded significant cost savings, as well as improvements in operational efficiencies. During the past three years, the firm has significantly expanded these capabilities to new areas of operations across its value chain. Attendees will hear how Airbus is benefiting from these systems, along with its latest plans for the next few years.
Kimberly Brayley, director of the VHA's RTLS Project Management Office, will share how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is rolling out the world's largest enterprise-wide real-time location system (RTLS) at its Veterans Health Administration division, which runs 152 medical centers and 1,400 community clinics and non-patient facilities (see U.S. Veterans Department Announces RFP for Nationwide RTLS Solution). The active RFID-based solution is initially focused on four use cases: asset management, temperature tracking, supply chain management and sterilization process flow management. Attendees will receive an update on the VA's progress and the benefits it has achieved to date, and learn how the department is managing such a large, complex deployment.
"RFID technology has matured greatly in the past few years, and we are pleased to be showcasing three major RFID projects in aerospace, health care and retail," says Mark Roberti, RFID Journal's founder and editor. "These three projects are enterprise-wide, and show that RFID technology is delivering value in mission-critical applications."
LIVE! 2014 will also feature four industry-specific and four how-to conference tracks, as well as eight in-depth preconference seminars and workshops, four post-conference seminars, fast-track training (provided by RFID4U), the RFID Journal Awards and a co-located event, IEEE RFID 2014. In addition, the conference will offer exhibits and demonstrations conducted by more than 200 of the industry's leading technology firms.
Attendees registering by Friday, Jan. 24, will have the opportunity to save more than $600 off regular rates for the RFID industry's largest conference and exhibition. Additional information regarding LIVE! 2014 is available at www.rfidjournalevents.com/live/.
