In RFID the cart has come before the horse for retail applications.
The retail community would like very cheap transponders in extreme volumes, imposing their ideas by means of edicts. However these edicts do not take into account practical issues such as:
* The choice of the correct RF protocols to cater for many readers working in close proximity (tag-talks-first vs reader-talks-first protocols).
* The limited capacities of the electronic manufacturing industry to produce extreme volumes of circuits.
* The unwillingness of the electronic manufacturing industry, in the light of the depression in the industry, to invest massively in new capital equipment to produce an untested technology in extreme volumes.
* The need for a global solution that would fit the limited radio spectrum available in many countries.
* The need for large scale testing site and application testing before starting extreme volume production.
There are numerous other impediments as well, such as:
* Uncertainty exists regarding the patent situations and what actual technology will be needed.
* The EPC operation is effectively a closed shop where you have to buy your membership.
* The EPC is 'user-heavy' and needs much higher representation of the 'technical' community.
* The standards are coming out before the technology is developed or tested.
* New technology (such as printed antennas) needs to be developed.
In listening to the dream benefits that are promised by many of the proponents of the proposed RFID solution for retail, one realises that much of the benefit relates to improved IT systems for tracking and tracing, ordering and invoicing (which has been packaged with a need for a new RFID system), which meant changing the numbering system.
It must slowly be dawning on the retail industry, that its hope of achieving this new era, requires the ditching of the RFID component of the project at this stage, as that part requires the involvement of much capital and of participants who are unwilling to take the route to bankruptcy on an untested technology.
The solution is to stick to the current bar code implementation for scanning and to focus on updating the IT systems to achieve the new benefits. The advantage with bar code implementation is that it is a mature industry with a fully-installed base of scanners; it is a system that can be machine-readable or can be read in a numeric form by humans when no scanner is available; and the same coding could be used in an RFID system, when it becomes economically practical.
Following this route would allow the retail industry to immediately focus on achieving its goals. It would allow the RFID industry to take small steps to maturity, winning the confidence of the major manufacturing giants and allowing them to make safe investments in new capital equipment for extreme volumes, and it would allow all retailers to migrate seamlessly from the one technology to the other - be they retail giants, or 'Mom & Pop' stores.
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