Time to Face RFID Reality

by Gary Hartley on 2010-06-29

‘Those who said the Auto-ID Center’s vision of ubiquitous RFID was unrealistic aren’t laughing today. Now all companies have to re-evaluate the facts and get real.’

I hoard magazines. Over the Easter break I ploughed through some old magazine covers and came across a RFID Journal from January 2004. Now when it comes to RFID, I remember the period around 2004 – ‘05 quite well – it was the height of the RFID hype curve when RFID was being touted as the new black in business and supply chain transformation. Frankly, I believed it - or at least wanted to. Interestingly, in the 2004 RFID magazine one of the contributors, the highly respected Kevin Ashton , predicted that ‘barring a meteor strike, RFID will be ubiquitous by the end of the decade. The end of the decade is pretty much here now – and ubiquitous RFID is nowhere in sight. So, if Ashton’s prediction is right, between now and the end of December we’ve got an extra celestial event to look forward to.

The widespread global adoption of RFID was seen as a given back then because the likes of Wal-Mart, The US Department of Defense, other US based government departments and European retailers were committed to the technology with plenty of others predicted to follow suit because of the business promises on offer. The case for the elusive 5 cent tag emerged about the same time and the consultants advised us to prepare for the silent commerce revolution – a new era where business benefits would be derived from new types of applications that could track and monitor objects remotely, without people being involved using tagging and tracking technologies in combination with the internet. RFID would obviously become better and cheaper as more companies adopted it thereby creating a virtuous cycle. Early RFID adopters would reap the rewards and those taking a more cautious watch and learn approach would find the strategy fatal.

I don’t want to imply that the 2010 Easter season has moved me towards some form of RFID epiphany but having looked back to those 2004 predictions – I am now considering what the future does hold for this technology. Visions of supply chain visibility and management applications drove the RFID revolution over the past decade but these applications have not been adopted as predicted. The reality is that the RFID of 2010 looks nothing like the RFID of 2004.        

The end user, the most important stakeholder in RFID is, and invariably always will be RFID’s final arbiter and will determine its destiny. It is the end user who will determine and drive the direction and adoption of RFID into the future. The good news is that RFID has and will continue to become a lot less expensive, perform much better and the conformance to global standards by end users will be critical for supply chain interoperability and visibility long term. The surviving RFID vendors will focus on improvements and develop solutions focused on the key applications such as tag read/write performance and certainly innovation will continue. The reality is though, that it will be the implementers, the end user community that will drive change and the rate of change.

I suggest that a balanced view sees organisations looking towards adopting RFID technologies not because it’s revolutionary or expected but because it adds real value to business operations and overall financial performance. Adoption where RFID solves a business issue that other solutions can’t and where gains can be realised through a measurable return on investment and frankly, where implementation makes solid economic sense.

‘Those who said the Auto-Id Center’s vision of ubiquitous RFID was unrealistic aren’t laughing today. Now all companies have to re-evaluate the facts and get real. (Ashton, RFID Journal 2004). Six years has been a long time in ‘modern RFID’ and with the luxury of six years of RFID hindsight, companies are in fact able to re-evaluate the facts with more realism now. Getting real doesn’t mean that an organisation has to expect the worst or refrain from investing until the assurance of absolute certainty. Getting Real – that is realism, is looking at the business and making a balanced decision to understand if RFID is fit-for-purpose or not. The realty is that RFID is not everywhere and ubiquitous and it doesn’t have to be. Really.


Gary Hartley
GM - GS1
www.GS1NZ.org