RFID Journal LIVE! 2022, RFID Journal’s 20th annual conference and exhibition, was attended by 1,500 people from more than 30 countries. While this total was down from events held prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, it was more than double the number who showed up in September for LIVE! 2021. The event was held in Las Vegas, Nev., on May 17-19.
The conference opened with four tracks on May 17: RFID in the Food Chain, RFID and IoT for Inventory and Warehouse Management, How to Comply with and Benefit From Retailer RFID Requirements and Technical Workshop: How to Integrate RFID into a Manufacturing Line. The last two were introduced to help suppliers meet tagging requirements from retail customers in the most cost-effective way.
On the evening of May 17, Dr. Bill Hardgrave, the founder of the Auburn University RFID Lab and now the president of the University of Memphis, gave a keynote address in which he looked back at 18 years of LIVE! presentations. He charted how retail adoption has changed from a focus on pallets and cases to tagging items, and to addressing issues like “buy online, pickup in store,” or BOPIS for short (see Omnichannel Enablement: The Tipping Point for RFID).
Dr. Hardgrave was followed by a panel of experienced end users—Chad Simpson of City Furniture, Johan Stenström from Stadium, and Deirdre Schmidt of defense contractor BAE Systems—who discussed the lessons they learned during their deployments (see 20 Years of RFID Journal LIVE: Lessons Learned From Experienced End Users). Schmidt, for example, advised the audience not to invest in custom tags, noting, “Ours are still in storage somewhere.”
On Wednesday morning, Aleasha Burnell, the director of quality systems applications at Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain (JJSC) presented a detailed case study into how her organization is using RFID throughout the supply chain. This was a key area of interest for the audience, given current supply chain challenges (see Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain (JJSC) Improves Product Availability for Orthopedic Loaner Sets With RFID).
A panel discussion held at LIVE!
Following that case study, RFID Journal’s founder and editor, Mark Roberti, interviewed Joe Coll, the VP of asset-protection operations and strategy at Macy’s, about the retailer’s use of RFID to combat shoplifting by gangs of criminals (see Using RFID to Bring Down Organized Retail Crime). That session was followed by a case study explaining how BAE Systems developed a warehouse-management system capable of providing real-time storage space-utilization metrics for the company’s warehouse-management team (see BAE Systems Gets Smart with Warehouse Utilization and POU Replenishment).
A total of nine tracks were held on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning: Retail and Apparel (May 18-19), Manufacturing and Supply Chain (May 18), Manufacturing (May 19), Supply Chain and Logistics (May 19), Health Care/Pharmaceuticals (May 18-19), Defense, Aviation and Energy (May 18), Internet of Things (May 18), Emerging Technologies (May 18) and Innovation (May 19). The event also included the RFID Journal Awards, with the winners announced at 1 PM in the Awards Theater. A list of finalists is posted at the RFID Journal Awards website, and the winners are listed here.
The exhibit hall was busy for all three days, with conversations continuing in most booths right up until the hall closed at 3 PM on Thursday. RFID Journal LIVE! 2023 is slated to be held on May 9-11 at the Orange County Convention Center, located in Orlando, Fla. For information about this and other RFID Journal events, click here.
The exhibit hall at RFID Journal LIVE! was busy for all three days of the conference.