Last week I visited the EPCglobal test-centre for RFID set up by GS1 UK in Winsford in Cheshire and hosted by Intellident.
The launch was attended by a number of users including Christian Salvesen, Carphone Warehouse, Aesseal plus companies specialising for example in tyres and food manufacturing, all of them keen to learn how they can get business benefits from RFID including cost savings, improved accuracy and increased efficiency.
The centre's remit is to provide the facilities and testing environment to show organisations how the technology works on their own products in conditions similar to their own.
Simon Woodward, pre-sales and innovation analyst for Group IT at Christian Salvesen describes the centre as "Exactly what the industry needs to encourage widespread adoption of RFID. Supply chain directors and managers are often suspicious of the hype surrounding RFID; what they need is advice and information they can trust from a service which is independent of solution providers’ sales teams. The Centre fills this gap through its expert team and the execution of true to life pilots.”
His thoughts are echoed by Stuart Welsh, head of IT for Aesseal. “With the advice and support of the staff at the Centre, we are now able to identify the different areas that RFID technology can be used within our organisation,” he said. “It is important that we understand the possible benefits that can be obtained by using RFID within our organisation so that we can plan our next steps effectively.”
What was striking about the day was the immediacy with which visitors from entirely different industries, say tyres and logistics, could network, sit down and discuss mutual issues with RFID. Perhaps because of the competitive landscape, organisations are wary of letting out details of business return on investment-enabling RFID developments to rivals in public. At the centre however, companies with a common problem - implementing RFID - were able to swap contact details and perhaps, learn from each other.
RFID is evolving. It's no longer just about "Will it work?", but more sophisticated areas, such as
* new types of information, such as event, or sensor-related data
* more detailed location information
* more items tracked. Not necessarily pallets, but items.
And then there are the questions to answer:
* What data to put on the tag
* How to put the data on the tag
* How the tag talks to the reader
* What data to capture about RFID read events
* How RFID data is aggregated, filtered, and linked to busines processes and internal IT systems
* How all that data is managed once you have it
* And how it is exchanged with business partners
The centre, utilising a combination of GS1 UK's supply chain standards knowledge and RFID on-the-ground expertise from Intellident's largest installed base of UK RFID implementations, will offer unbiased information about the technology and how to implement it. From the point of view of would-be RFID users, this is a big step forward.