This article was originally published by RFID Update.
April 21, 2009—Wealth and asset management firm Robert W. Baird & Co. has published the April edition of RFID Monthly. Baird has given RFID Update permission to reprint the Key Developments section (below), which offers the report highlights. For those wanting more detail, the complete 17-page document is available free here. Following are highlights:
- Survey Shows Mixed Environment. We conducted our quarterly automated data capture survey, which included 73 resellers. Overall business conditions deteriorated further, primarily as a result of project push-backs. However, we see some signs of optimism, particularly with improving project pipelines and software-based projects. RFID appears to have increased interest with key applications, most notably asset tracking and inventory management.
- Resourcing an RFID Opportunity. We continue to see trends suggesting many producers that have offshored production in the last several years/decades are, in some instances, reconsidering that strategy. At the heart of the consideration are the advances in productivity that are leading to lower costs, more flexible supply chains and higher quality. We see more advances continuing to drive this trend. We expect a key tool in achieving these advances will be RFID.
- Full Apparel System Introduced. Checkpoint introduced its Merchandise Visibility Solution which leverages RFID to improve supply chain visibility (see RFID Baby Born from Checkpoint-OATSystems Marriage). We see incremental opportunity given this extends Checkpoint’s core apparel capability, and that retailers see value in such a solution. We expect some customers will adopt in 2009 resulting in modest benefit, with stronger traction in 2010.
- Privacy. We continue to see RFID privacy legislation from several states. Most of the legislation has not moved forward or has been modified since introduction. However, such legislation remains active and could have an impact on the RFID industry as it progresses. We are concerned with negative impacts as legislators seem to be singling out RFID and not taking security capabilities into account.
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