Casinos and gambling may not immediately spring to mind as a hotbed for RFID, but Harrah's Entertainment's CIO, Tim Stanley, certainly sees RFID as a key process and business enabler for his organisation.
Stanley's embrace of RFID as an innovation tool for Harrah's business is well covered in this article about his being named InformationWeek's CIO of the Year.
“Short range wireless technologies may hold the most promise for Harrah’s, whether through RFID-enabled poker chips, table games, and identification schemes or through kiosks that can read promotional text messages sent to customers’ cell phones. For example, Harrah’s is testing RFID-embedded chips that interact with readers installed under gaming tables, letting floor bosses track and rate play far more accurately than they can now. RFID might have run into problems at some early adopters like Wal-Mart, but Stanley says there’s no stopping it in gaming, especially as an emerging mass market drives down prices.
“More broadly, RFID features heavily in Stanley’s plans for the next generation of Total Rewards – chips embedded in bracelets, for example, that customers might user at a pool when they don’t have their wallets, or possibly in waitresses’ uniforms to track their service. RFID-embedded stickers attached to customers’ cell phones might one day let them buy food or cash in on promotions with a swipe of the device.”
From the account here, you'd certainly summise that Stanley understands the competitive advantage RFID can provide within his business. And although geographically and culturally speaking, this application in Las Vegas is a long way removed from the UK - the closest link you could possibly make is that Harrah's is being tipped as a a potential buyer for the Rank casinos group here - the point is surely that here is a CIO who gets RFID as an enabler within his particular business. And is prepared to use it.
Comments (3)
I would not sit at an RFID enabled card table for fear that so much constant exposure to RF energy would lead to impotence or even castration.
Posted by Chris Kapsambelis | January 11, 2008 12:41 PM
Posted on January 11, 2008 12:41
Hi,
You need not fear about the RF energy from casino chips. The RF radiation from your cellphone will be many times higher than from the low power casino tags.
For those would wish to know more about RFID technology, an excellent free e-learning course is available from
www.freerfidcourse.com
Posted by Sam | January 24, 2008 3:46 PM
Posted on January 24, 2008 15:46
Sam's comment applies only to Active RFID. My understanding is that poker chips will use Passive RFID which depend high rf energy from readers, presumably mounted under the table. These produce more energy then a cell phone.
Posted by Chris Kapsambelis | January 27, 2008 2:55 PM
Posted on January 27, 2008 14:55