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in an airport at frankfurt, germany, a maintenance worker crawls through the cramped ventilation system, wearing a small device that reads data from

chips positioned throughout the system to verify that he’s done his job. At a U.S. themepark, a teenager on a waterslide wears a special wristband with an embedded chip that

will remember how many rides he has taken, no matter how wet he gets. And at alarge drug company’s warehouse, a shipment of the regulated narcotic OxyContin

gets tagged with chips to track its route, and discourage theft and counterfeiting.What do all these chips have in common? Each contains special RFID(radio frequency identification) technology, which enables a device to

read data stored on the chips at a distance, without line-of-sightscanning or physical contact.

After years of use in applications such as vehicle tracking, factoryautomation, and anti-theft systems, RFID is suddenly poised to

break into the same league as the transistor and the microproces-sor. The cost of RFID tags has dropped from several dollars to

30 cents per tag or less, making RFID increasingly cost-effec-tive for much higher volume applications, especially in the

supply chain. Driven by recent RFID mandates from sev-eral large buyers including Wal-Mart, Target, Albert-

sons, and the U.S. Department of Defense, much ofthe corporate world is scrambling to test and roll

out pilots of RFID technology.“There’s a lot of hype around RFID andmaybe a little bit of herd mentality,” says

Jon Brendsel, VeriSign’s director of elec-tronic product code network services.

“Lots of end-users don’t know whythey need to do it, but they know

they need to do it.”The list of potential RFIDbenefits is seemingly end-

less: greater visibility andproduct velocity across

the supply chain, bet-ter inventory man-

36 I N F O W O R L D . C O M 0 4 . 1 2 . 0 4

The Rush to

Mandates are forcing companies to implement radio frequency identification systems whether they like it or not

BY DAVID L. MARGULIUS | ILLUSTRATION BY TIMOTHY COOK

a g e m e n t ,a u t o m a t i creplenishment,reduced invoicereconciliation andlabor costs on thereceiving dock, easierproduct tracing andrecalls, and reduced prod-uct tampering, theft, andcounterfeiting. But to getthese benefits, industries willhave to navigate a host of thornychallenges involving hardwareand software, standards, and evenbusiness models.

The Physics TestThe first set of issues facing RFIDdeployments is the physics of gettingRFID readers to read tags accurately inreal-world environments such as ware-houses. Current success rates for tagreadings run as low as 80 percent,explains Kara Romanow, a researchdirector at AMR Research. “The tagsjust fail. The quality’s just not there yet,”she says. RFID readers have a hardtime detecting the tags through inter-ference from metal, liquid, nylon con-veyor belts, and dense materials such asfrozen meat and chicken parts.

Furthermore, as with other wirelesstechnologies, the devil is in the detailsof reader infrastructure layouts andpotential conflicts with other sourcesof wireless transmissions. “Every site’sa little different. You can’t just throwup antennae; there’s a tuning aspect,”says Tig Gilliam, a partner at IBMBusiness Consulting Services. “This isdirty fingernail stuff.”

To further complicate matters, thereare two types of tags: active tags,which contain a battery and can trans-mit further but have a shorter lifespan; and passive, which draw power

Phases of RFID Build OutCompanies will gradually deploy full RFID systems as

more corporate success stories unfold.

BASIC PILOTS2004 Manufacturing companies conduct site evaluations

and business process engineering as they implementthe minimum necessary to comply with mandates.

Retailers try to achieve operational efficiency in thesupply and distribution centers. Systems begin

being deployed for reading and capturing data.

OPERATIONAL DEPLOYMENTS 2005-2006 Manufacturers create efficiencies

in their systems, including tracking and inte-grating data. Retailers extend RFID to

selected items for tagging to allow forsmarter shopping.

ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION2007-2009 RFID data meshes with

work flow and business process.Collaboration increases to enable

near real-time collection andresponse in the supply chain.

EAI (enterprise applicationintegration) occurs. For

retailers, item-level track-ing is deployed, and new

applications are devel-oped for shopping

convenience.SOURCE: NOBLESTAR SYSTEMS,

VENTURE DEVELOPMENT

from the reader and so have a shorterrange but can live forever. And thereare also two competing standards fortransmission protocols, 13.56MHzand UHF, each regulated differentlyand with different effective ranges andabilities to avoid interference.

To pass the RFID physics test, expertsrecommend putting time and engi-neering resources into testing whichRFID configurations will work best foryour specific application.

“This is not a science; it’s still an art,”says Tony Sabetti, RFID products busi-ness manager at Texas Instruments,one of the largest tag producers. And it’sa good idea to get cross-functionalteams, including product, manufactur-ing, and supply chain experts involved

in RFID planning, especially whenRFID tags will be affixed to a productduring the manufacturing process.

The Software ChallengeOn the software side, the challenges toRFID deployment include getting theright data onto the tags in the firstplace, and then leveraging the data thetags generate as they navigate the sup-ply chain across multiple enterprise sys-tems. “Software is a huge issue,” AMRResearch’s Romanow says. “Everyone’sunderestimating it.”

Romanow says that for manufactur-ers, getting the data onto the RFID tagsin the first place requires that existingorder processing and fulfillment sys-tems be capable of operating at the pal-let, case, carton, or item levels, whichmany currently are not. For item-levelRFID tracking, these systems also needto be able to handle sequential data(sequential serial numbers for a wholecarton of otherwise identical products,for instance), but most existing applica-tions are oriented toward classes ofobjects rather than sequences.

Once the tags are loaded with data,the real software challenges begin,starting with managing the readerinfrastructure. Today’s RFID readersare simple devices that typically lack anoperating system, upgradable firm-ware, standardized drivers, or commu-nication protocols — although this isstarting to change. “There are no con-sistent mechanisms to manage them,check their health, do softwareupgrades, and turn them on and off,”says Javed Sikander, Microsoft’s pro-gram manager for industry solutionsenablement. “There’s no standardinterface across all the readers.”

Next comes the middleware chal-lenge of managing how the readers fil-ter data coming from the tags as they

38 I N F O W O R L D . C O M 0 4 . 1 2 . 0 4

how is UPS, one of the world’s largest logistics companies, ap-proaching RFID? Like many companies, it’s launching pilot deployments to betterunderstand the business case for a wider rollout.

“Understanding how RFID can impact our business processes through efficienciesor faster, better information is the challenge we face today,” says Bob Nonneman, anindustrial engineering manager at UPS.

The company recently began a series of RFID pilot tests both in its package deliverybusiness and its supply chain solutions business, which serve many customers whomust comply with upcoming RFID mandates.

In one pilot, Nonneman says, passive RFID tags are replacing bar codes on reusablefiberboard tote boxes used to shuttle packages through UPS’s automated facilities. Thegoal is to extend the life of the tote boxes and to reduce the read-failure rates of the bar-codes, which tend to wear off over time. In another pilot, RFID tags have been attachedto UPS trucks in an effort to cost-effectively monitor vehicle activity moving on and offthe property at three different locations. “The goal is to eventually automate our arrivaland departure process,” Nonneman says, “through an integration of RFID technology,wireless technology, and potential electronic lock technology.”

Much of the work to date has involved tinkering with the details of specific appli-cations to achieve the right cost and performance trade-offs, Nonneman explains. Forexample, UPS has tried to balance the longevity of the tote box with the life of the tag,or to balance distance from the reader with the speed of the truck. Another chal-lenge has been reducing the high rate of reader failures.

“The manufacturers have quite a ways to go. We’ve had quite a few failures out ofthe box,” Nonneman says. But he notes that reader manufacturers are constantlyleapfrogging one another and recently have come out with so-called “agile” readers,which are software upgradeable and can support multiple protocols. He also saysreader performance has been highly application-dependent, and choosing the rightreader for an application is a key success factor.

Integrating RFID with UPS’s software systems has not been difficult because un-like most enterprise software applications, UPS’s code is already designed to uniquelyidentify and track individual items and capture all the data associated with them. “Mov-ing information along with the goods is nothing new to us,” he says.

Based on the successes so far, Nonneman sees many opportunities for UPS to ex-pand its use of RFID; for example, in the handling of hazardous materials and highvalue items, which currently require more human involvement. “RFID can providedouble-checks without a lot of human intervention,” he says.

Nonneman’s advice for companies thinking about RFID? “Just get started,” he says.“Choose a pilot that’s small and manageable ... once that snowball starts rolling, it’llpick up speed on its own.”— D.L.M.

‘The goal is to eventuallyautomate our arrivaland departure process.’

— Bob Nonneman

move through the supply chain. “If I puta tag within the read field of an anten-na, the reader reads it a couple hundredtimes a second,” VeriSign’s Brendselexplains. “You need a middleware layerwhich knows that the first time it seesit, it’s an event, and the next 10,000times its just garbage.”

Once the data has been acquired andfiltered, the work of feeding it to theappropriate applications begins. Mostcompanies have multiple applicationsthat need access to the RFID data, notesIBM’s Gilliam, including warehousemanagement systems, inbound supplychain systems, planning systems, ordermanagement systems, and data ware-house and analytics systems. “You’ve gotan enormous amount of data that has tobe moved around the network amongapplications,” Gilliam says.

And that data must be moved quick-ly and assigned accurately to the appro-priate business process. “Just dealingwith that volume of information com-ing in is going to test the limits for a lotof the real-time software out there,”Microsoft’s Sikander says. “The soft-ware pipes in between the devices andthe host need to be able to pump dataat a very high pace.”

Although most of the largest softwarevendors have made announcementsabout supporting RFID, very few haveactually released products, althoughthat is expected to change this year. “I’dgive the [large ERP vendors] a C -.Some have done next to nothing” indeploying RFID-enabled applications,AMR Research’s Romanow says,though she points to exceptions such asSAP and middleware vendors OATSys-tems and ACSIS, and warehouse man-agement vendors Manhattan Associatesand RedPrairie.

For the foreseeable future, RFIDdeployments will require a lot of cus-

I N F O W O R L D . C O M 0 4 . 1 2 . 0 4 39

CASE STUDY

UPS Pilots an RFID Rollout

But there are challenges. “Howclosely can we align that very thin[license plate] representation withthe keys that already exist in data-bases like VINs (Vehicle IdentificationNumbers) or GTINs (Global TradeItem Numbers)?” asks Sue Hutchin-son, EPCglobal product manager.“How do we control access so it’sappropriate to the business rela-tionship; how does Toys R Us makesure Mattel doesn’t see what Hasbro’ssending?”

The Business CaseA final and crucial hurdle for mostRFID deployments is coming up with abusiness case to support the requiredinvestment. Although in theory thecost-saving and strategic benefits fromRFID are huge, getting those benefitsrequires many trading partners to par-ticipate, as well as significant invest-ments in hardware, software, andhuman resources, an investment AMRResearch’s Romanow claims can reach B

EN

BA

RB

AN

TE

tomer integration. “The consultantsespecially in the early going will playa huge role … this is a huge opportu-nity for the systems integrators,”Romanow says.

Collaboration and Data IssuesTo maximize the benefits of RFID,data generated by the tags must besharable by business partners and withall companies along the supply chainthat are using the same tag. Twopotential standards have emerged tofacilitate this maximization: the EPC(Electronic Product Code) standardmanaged by the EPCglobal consor-tium and supported by Wal-Mart andmany large retailers and vendors, andan alternate standard developed byISO (International Organization forStandardization) and supported bynumerous European companies andthe U.S. Department of Defense.

Most analysts expect the two com-peting standards to merge quickly,probably before Wal-Mart’s mandated

RFI

Dm

iddl

ewar

e

Tracking From End to EndA full-blown system moves data through operations in near-real time.

An RFID reader scans tags on pallets as they are loaded onto the warehouse loading dock.

Warehouse Database

EPCIS ERP

Supplychain

Inventory

Remoteworkers

Mes

sagi

ngm

iddl

ewar

e

1

1 A automatic data collection system transfers the information to databases and to an EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Service) to number and identify each piece of data.

2

RFID middleware translates, integrates, and filters data for use with enterprise applicfations.

3 Applications such as ERP, supply chain management, logistics, and inventory accesses the data for analytics, dashboards, and portals used by management and workers.

4 Messaging middleware transports information to partners, remote workers, and others.

SOURCE: NOBLESTAR SYSTEMS

5

2 3 4 5

Others

Partners

January 2005 deadline for its top 100suppliers to support RFID. The largerissue is how uniformly the resultingstandard will actually be implemented,and how much collaboration it will ulti-mately enable.

The EPC standard works on theconcept that each RFID tag acts as a“license plate.” Rather than try to loadtoday’s capacity-constrained 64- or96-bit tags with lots of data about thespecific item or shipment, the idea isto simply store a unique identifier thatwill refer to detailed informationstored elsewhere on a global network.This identifier would include a ‘manager ID’ (to identify the manu-facturer), an ‘object ID’ (to identifythe class of object), and a serial num-ber for that individual item, asprovided by the manufacturer. TheEPCglobal consortium envisions afederated network of providers ofvalue-added services based on thelicense plate, similar in architecture tothe Internet itself.

40 I N F O W O R L D . C O M 0 4 . 1 2 . 0 4

as high as $13 million to $24 million inthe first year for a typical large con-sumer products manufacturer.

“The problem is, no one cares aboutthe total business case, they only carewhat their share of it is,” IBM’s Gilliampoints out. “The big hitch is, when doyou sort of get critical mass?”

Gilliam says given the lack of imme-diate ROI and uncertainty about stan-dards and the specific details of compli-ance requirements from large buyerslike Wal-Mart and the Department ofDefense, most companies are takingone of two approaches.

The first is the so-called ‘slap and ship’approach, or doing the minimum levelof investment to slap tags onto a subsetof outgoing shipments to comply withthe current mandates. A second, smallergroup is making bigger investments indeployments further upstream, in aneffort to both comply with mandatesand wring out some internal operationalefficiencies from the technology.

“Some companies think ‘Gosh, can Ijust wait a little longer? What’s the min-imum thing I have to do to comply?’”Gilliam explains, whereas others “havedone a business case and know whichproducts [if tagged] can offer a return.”

But even the slap-and-shippers mayhave to get more involved than theythought, sooner than they thought,EPCglobal’s Hutchinson warns. “Evenwith a slap and ship approach, there’sstill a good deal of [work] involved tomake sure you have your tags pro-grammed correctly and that you’retracking the goods for this RFID pilotimplementation versus the rest of yoursupply chain” she says. “I think peopleare coming to the realization thatthey’re going to be looking at commu-nication to their back-office systemsand middleware challenges sooner thanthey thought.” i

I N F O W O R L D . C O M 0 4 . 1 2 . 0 4 41

Transforming Data to Business Logicthe proliferation of RFID readers and tags has only just begun,but some analysts are already predicting that when fully operational, RFID will gen-erate upwards of 5TB of data at a company’s warehouse and distribution centeron a daily basis.

There is no doubt that a great deal of that RFID data will be useful for trackingproducts, in time and space, at the local warehouse or distribution center. Sim-ply tracking the number of times a pallet is moved and routed around a warehousecan improve internal processes.

But on the back end, after shielding enterprise applications from most of thatlow-level data, the long-term goal will be to turn the more critical RFID data intobusiness logic that enterprise systems can use for executive decision-making.

For the most part, filtering, translating, and finally integrating the right RFIDinto the enterprise applications is handled by middleware.

Forward-thinking hardware manufacturers such as Intermec Technologies,for example, are putting software intelligence into their tags and readers, says MikeFisher, RFID business development manager at Intermec. “You have a group-select feature in these intelligent readers. With a read-write RFID tag, you can des-ignate that only certain tags on pallets or on cases be read as it comes throughthe dock door,” Fisher says.

Upstream, a supply chain management system might leverage the program-mable capabilities of the intelligent readers to monitor deliveries and send an alertto a supply chain management portal if a supplier is not living up to schedules.

Steve Banker, service director of supply chain management at ARC AdvisoryGroup, says the real issue is integrating data from a variety of sources in orderto streamline processes. “By integrating data across the supply chain, you can geta much clearer picture of what your lead times are and variability around leadtimes,” Banker says.

Supply chain middleware vendors like i2 Technologies are also tackling the prob-lem of RFID data integration. “The problem is there is no standard representa-tion of what the data model should be,” says Pallab Chatterjee, president ofsolutions operations at i2. The company is using the concept of master datamanagement, a file where the different formats and protocols from all the lead-ing suppliers and manufacturers for naming and categorizing the very sameproducts are stored and synchronized with one another.

IBM, SAP, Oracle, and ObjectStore are also planning to support RFID systems. From real-time alerts when perishable goods arrive at the dock door to a sys-

tem that can convert a purchase order into an alert that tells the forklift operatorto move a newly delivered pallet to the shipping dock rather than the stockroom, RFID will eliminate tasks, save time, and add new dimensions of value toa company that uses the data strategically.— Ephraim Schwartz

RFID will eliminatetasks … and add newdimensions of value.

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goals❑ 02. Define Architecture❑ 03. Choose Technology Platforms❑ 04. Develop Technology Integration

Strategy❑ 05. Test, pilot, implement emerging

technologies❑ 06. Scalability Planning❑ 07. Build, Run Web Services

❑ 08. Internet / Network Infrastructure❑ 09. Customer Relationship Management❑ 10. External Partnership Management❑ 11. Budgeting❑ 12. Recruitment & Retention❑ 13. Other_________________________

(Please describe)❑ 99. None of the above