Five of the first seven enrollees in the RFID Professional Certification program, offered by the RFID Center of Excellence (RFID CoE) and GS1 Brazil, have completed the coursework, taken the exam and receive accreditation. The program, designed to provide a means for Brazilian professionals to demonstrate their knowledge in the field of radio frequency identification, was launched in October to meet demand from RFID professionals, as well as from many companies that have begun to demand guarantees before hiring skilled labor.
According to Renata Rampim, one of the RFID Professional Certification instructors, the program successfully achieved its goals of providing a solid foundation for understanding the RFID’s principles, ecosystem and engineering, and preparing its students for the certification exam.
“The course covered all of the areas that a RFID professional should know,” says Rampim, adding that that curriculum includes things that are not commonly experienced in day-to-day RFID use.
With intensive focus on the certification exam, the RFID CoE and GS1 Brazil have created a preparatory course that comprises such topics as interrogation zones; system testing and debugging; standards and regulations; EPCglobal standards; component selection and installation; RFID peripherals; and reader user-interface (middleware). The test—consisting of 80 multiple-choice questions in Portuguese—requires a minimum score of 70 percent in each of these areas.
The preparatory course was taught at RFID CoE in the city of Sorocaba, and the certification exam at GS1 Brazil’s offices in São Paulo. According to Rampim, students who participated in this first course had high level of knowledge. “Thus, there was a lot of interaction, enriching content further,” she says. “It was with great pleasure that I could contribute to this initiative to implement certification in Brazil.”
Rampim notes that training for certification covers topics that are more advanced and extensive compared with other training offered by the Center of Excellence. To participate in the certification program, the enrollees were required to complete two prerequisites courses—”RFID Implementation” and “RFID Middleware”—both offered by RFID CoE, or have at least two years work experience in RFID, working with advanced technology concepts. The certification is valid for only three years, and at the end of that period, it must be renewed. At that point in time, the participant may choose to retake the course for updates, or just the exam.
“It is also important that GS1 EPCglobal RFID standards are promoted and supported because they represent the standardization of procedures in the development of RFID systems and give professional evidence for the market to know the standards and how to apply them,” says Armando Lucretius, manager of the RFID CoE. “Thus, they allow open systems, and work with any type of infrastructure and tags.”
Wilson Cruz, an executive at GS1 Brazil, notes that RFID CoE is a laboratory accredited by GS1 to perform a series of RFID tests and, in addition, has a well-established training program. Cruz, who also taught part of the certification course, says the RFID CoE provides a solid foundation in GS1 and RFID technology, both theoretical and practical.
“Our partnership is very important and has been underway for many years,” Cruz says. “The agreement to hold this certification came almost naturally, as the market is in need of structured and grounded training. Certification is a competitive advantage, because it demonstrates that professionals are better prepared to support companies that want to deploy the technology.”
According to Rampim, the certification program gives RFID professionals a way to differentiate themselves. “For the contractor, there had been no way for an RFID professional to guarantee that he had the knowledge needed to properly deploy the system. Certification will serve as proof of this knowledge. And the most qualified professionals will have better pay and more opportunities to conduct business.”
Explaining how the curriculum was set up, Cruz says, “We prepared a specific module on the GS1 EPCglobal standards, levels of identification, data capture and information sharing. This is a major feature because the professional will be aligned with global initiatives and the GS1 EPCglobal standards.” In this particular module, he explains, the student should gain an understanding of the EPC Network architecture and its components, as well as the principles of how radio frequency identification works.
“Professionals who working in the AIDC market,” says Cruz, “are trained in the school of bar code and therefore are already in advanced career levels. There will be a demand for technicians who can execute projects transition from bar code to EPC RFID, and so we are talking about how the past 30 years of implementations should be updated.”