Week 2: RFID Case Studies and RFID Standard

As we have learned during week 1, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a relatively new technology to the supply chain, although it has been around since the 50's. RFID tags can be used in different configurations: Active/ Passive, Read-only, Write once/ read many (WORM), Read/ Write.

There are many benefits of RFID:

• RFID technology has the ability to send relatively large amounts of data with the product as it travels through the supply chain
• Read/ write RFID tags can be updated through the manufacturing steps of a product
• By lowering the error rate of goods moved through the supply chain, vendors can share in the savings realized by RFID technology

By using RFID, Wal-Mart saved EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS!!!

• 6.7 billion -- eliminating the need to have people scan barcodes on pallets
• $600 million -- reduced out of stock
• $575 million -- RFID scanning of products automatically reduces administrative error and vendor fraud
• $300 million -- better tracking of the more than 1 billion pallets and cases that move through its distribution centers each year
• $180 million -- improved visibility of what products are in the supply chain in its own distribution centers
• Total = $8.35 billion -- total pre-tax saving is higher than the total revenue of more than half the companies on the Fortune 500.

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ECPglobal:

• Standards and govemance
• Public policy
• Training templates
• Brands, marketing

Migration Paths

• Global Trade Item Number (GTIN): Item, case, pallet; 14-digit generalization of product barcodes
• Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC): Logistics units (shipping containers); SSCC is unique to a particular shipment
• Global Location Number (GLN): Physical, functional, legal entities; company division or department, down to specific storage area within a building
• Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI): Rented or loaned objects (pallets, gas cylinders, beer kegs...)
• Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI): High-value long-lived assets

EPCglobal Network Infrastructure

(Grandiose) vision is global common standardized network infrastructure:

• Tags with EPC's identify physical objects
• Readers with filtering/ aggregation gather information about tags
• Information about EPC's exchanged using Physical Markup Language
• PML resources identified on the Internet by the Object Naming Service

Instant ONS

• EPC is communicated in URI format
• Tag EPC (binary data) converted to pure identity
• Call ONS to find servers with information on EPC

Instant PML

• Markup language based on XML
• Core elements are sensors, observations, observables
• Example: tag read...

EPCIS: Addresses two fundamentally different types of data

• time-stamped data
• attribute data

EPCglobal Summary

• EPCglobal vision is Internet of Things
• Key standards already existing or soon to come: Electronic Product Code, Tag standards (class 0/1, Gen II)
• Network vision is more complex, path to realization difficult: PML, ONS, EPCIS, Savant, Partial/ delayed implementations likely