The RFID Reader

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today that it will start testing passports that contain RFID tags.

These RFID enabled passports have already been in use by other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. The DHS plans to try these new passports at the San Francisco airport, where it will become the second airport, after Los Angeles International Airport, to test these new passports.

The DHS plans to have all passports embedded with RFID technology that has the person’s private records and digital photograph by October 2006.

With the growing popularity of RFID many security experts are debating if the advantages of RFID outweigh its disadvantages.

One disadvantage in particular that they are worried about is their growing concern that RFID technology might allow others to violate someone’s trust and privacy. This is not only a concern for analysts as 21% of the consumers who are familiar with RFID technology are afraid it will be used by companies to track purchases, while 81% would feel better if the tag was removed before leaving the store.

However, companies such as Microsoft see RFID in the future being used to help people locate things in their home, whereas VeriChip Corp thinks that having a chip implanted in you with information about your medical illnesses could help medics.

However, the use of RFID for tracking individuals might soon be possible with identity documents.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it will support having RFID technology implemented to tag and track “baggage-loaders, fueling trucks, and other maintenance vehicles.”

This announcement came after it conducted a trial at the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Four million dollars has been allotted to fund this trial project that is being completed at Newark. However, the trial project there only uses RFID to track 80 vehicles, while a concurrent project at JAXPORT in Florida is using RFID to track baggage.

The vehicles in Newark are being monitored by equipment provided by I.D. Systems. I.D. Systems’ gateways were joined to nodes on a network located around the airport. Based on this, someone driving a vehicle could be tracked when the RFID Vehicle Assisted Communicator, linked to a GPS unit, transmitted a 900 MHz signal to the gateway.

Even though Walmart has successfully been able to persuade many of its suppliers that using RFID technology is beneficial in the long run, the US retailer will have a hard time persuading its Chinese suppliers that RFID technology is better for them as well. Not only will this be beneficial to Walmart’s Chinese suppliers, but to Walmart as well who receives approximately 50-70% of their dry goods from China.

RFID tags are wireless frequency tags that allow companies to tag and track their products. However, according to a recent survey completed by Fusion Consulting, many companies in the southern part of China are not aware or did not understand the benefits of RFID technology in the retail market.

According to Stephen Wong of EPCglobal Hong Kong, one of the main reasons why companies in South East Asia are slow to embrace RFID is due to the availability of cheap labor in China. However in western society, RFID technology has reduced labor costs leading to increased profits.

The NCR Corporation has announced today that it will use RFID technology to tag and tracks the products that the products it produces such as printers, software, and RFIT tags.

Vice President John Greaves sees this as a step in the right direction, "NCR is deploying RFID throughout its own supply chain to help realize the operational efficiencies our RFID solutions are delivering to our clients across multiple industries. We fully expect to realize measurable supply chain benefits in the short term for our own organization as a result of this process deployment."

Based in Dayton, Ohio the company is made up of 28,500 people. NCR expects to complete its RFID tagging by the end of 2006.

In an article appearing on CRMbuyer.com, similar to Walmart adopting RFID technology, telecommunications giant AT&T plans to begin a 3 month trial on using RFID in the new year.

The article stated:

“AT&T is planning a wide-sweeping RFID trial in the beginning of next year, the first such service initiated by a U.S. telecom operator. The 90-day trial will involve a half-dozen customers, ranging from the retail and financial sectors to manufacturing, and possibly even a government office, said Eric Shepcaro, AT&T vice president of business strategy and development.”
During this trial AT&T will conduct a certification program to vendors it plans to partner with. The full text of the article is available on the crmbuyer website.

An agreement has been signed by the Dow Chemical Company and EPCglobal US, as announced on sdcexec.com, in a effort to help develop the Electronic Product Code for RFID. Under this new agreement, the Dow Chemical Company will be able to further expand their research into their Corporate RFID/GPS Strategy.

Corporate Vice President Dave Kepler is just thrilled about the new venture, “"Joining EPCglobal US enables us to take our use of RFID/GPS technologies to the next level, contributing to the development of industry standards for RFID and helping drive increased usage of RFID/GPS to enhance the efficiency and security throughout the chemical industry supply chain," he said during an interview.

EPC is clearly one of the new “buzz” phrases and more companies are utilizing its ability to help them tag and track their inventory.

The RFID technology company TNT Express is expected to continue its expansion into China with its software that will help a laptop manufacturing plant tag and keep track of tis inventory.

"There is the potential for reduced shrinkage, reduced error rates and reduced labor costs [by using RFID to replace existing bar code scans" stated the project leader Sybren Tuinstra "It's not a question of if we deploy RFID but how much we deploy, how fast we deploy it and how much capital we invest."

In the beginning, TNT helped tagged and keep track of approximately 2000 laptops. The company is now expected to use “M” tags with better antennas, to increase the efficiency of keeping track of tags. This will increase the reading rates from 87% to 100%.

The RFID technology company TNT Express is expected to continue its expansion into China with its software that will help a laptop manufacturing plant tag and keep track of tis inventory.

"There is the potential for reduced shrinkage, reduced error rates and reduced labor costs [by using RFID to replace existing bar code scans" stated the project leader Sybren Tuinstra "It's not a question of if we deploy RFID but how much we deploy, how fast we deploy it and how much capital we invest."

In the beginning, TNT helped tagged and keep track of approximately 2000 laptops. The company is now expected to use “M” tags with better antennas, to increase the efficiency of keeping track of tags. This will increase the reading rates from 87% to 100%.

The latest news is that Kroger Co, nationwide retail grocery store is considering switching to RFID technology, with OATSystems help, to make them become more competitive against other supermarket chains. .

According to Marc Osofsky, Vice President of Marketing, the new RFID technology will help Kroger better handle their fresh produce, among other things:

AMR Research has found that for most grocers, fresh items makes up 50 percent of profits, but 60 percent of shrinkage [items lost to spoilage or theft]. [Grocery stores] make the most money from fresh products, but fresh products are generally not managed very well, so a lot of people are looking at RFID to help them sell more fresh products," he stated.

In a press release yesterday, the semiconductor company Impinj, Inc stated that it had secured the necessary 26.5 million dollar funding that it needed by contributions from new and existing investors.

Impinj, Inc is one of the leading manufacturers of high performance RFID products. The company expects to use the money to increase its research and product development in the semiconductor field.

As stated by Dr William Colleran, CEO and President of Impinj, Inc, "This new injection of capital allows Impinj to maintain our excellent progress delivering the semiconductor solutions that our customers in the explosive RFID and the nascent embedded nonvolatile markets are demanding. "We will continue to aggressively drive our product development and operations to maintain our leadership positions in those markets."

An interesting article appearing on the rfidjournal.com website stated how the authorities in Yokohama City, Japan will tag school children in an effort to study of RFID technology can monitor their safety to and from school.

The software that is being used to monitor this is AeroScout I-Safety, which involves having the child wear a bracelet with a 2.4 GHz RFID tag. According to Josh Slobin, marketing director, “The tags do not carry any information about the child. There is no data being transmitted that is potentially insecure.” Slobin later went on to say, "The information about the child resides on the software side of the system. There is no data being transmitted that is potentially insecure. That means no one could access the child's name or other personal information simply by using an RFID interrogator to capture the tag's data.”

The only thing that the bracelets will be able to tell is the correct address of the child. It will also give the child the ability to press a button and notify their parents if they need help.

Based on an article by Ray Unger of Madison.com, numerous businesses will be soon throwing out their bar-codes and replacing them with RFID technology.

Unger feels that the company most responsible for everyone switching to barcodes, Walmart, will also be one of them responsible for everyone switching to RFID, “In fact, the people who forced bar coding on the public in the first place, Wal-Mart, are among those who are doing the same with RFID. In early 2005, Wal-Mart required its top 100 suppliers to affix RFID tags to all bulk shipments. This mandate sped up the transition process and probably gave detractors another reason to hate the retail behemoth. Nonetheless, RFID is coming and promises to bring smiles to both retail shoppers and supply chain managers alike, “ Unger wrote. 

However some analysts feel that IBM and Walmart will be in competition to both see which of them can first introduce this technology.

Vue Technology and Symbol Technologies announced yesterday that they will enter into an agreement to develop RFID technology to curtail the theft of software and hardware products.

The use of RFID technology in the sale of pharmaceutical items is seen as a good thing, according to Kara Romanow, the research director at AMR Research Inc, "Tagging everything all the time doesn’t provide a lot of value, but tagging specific items to try and prevent counterfeiting does, such as high-end apparel, shoes, jewelry, sporting goods and pharmaceuticals. Tagging specific high-value items where counterfeiting is a problem holds tremendous potential for return on investment on technology projects."

The RFID platform will be called TrueVue RFID and it will allow retailers the ability to track inventory and sales.

Instead of new RFID readers, more consumers would like to have RFID technology that is more reliable, as stated in an article by Robert Malone on Forbes.com.

Malone continued to say that ‘users mainly want them (RFID boxes) to talk straight’. Omron RFID’s chief strategist Bill Arnold, stated that his company has a “95%-98% yield rate on quality inlay performance”.

However, Malone states that this percentage would mean that “5,000 out of 100,000 units are unreliable”.

With RFID tags that are unable to provide reliable data, the question that arises is how safe is the data being used for military or other purposes.

A contract has been signed by Savi Technology and NATO. This contract awards Savi Technology the ability to help NATO track the number of multi-national defense consignments using RFID. The defense consignments exist between Europe and Afghanistan.

According to Brent Bingham of NATO summed up why this decision was made: “NATO has concluded that this type of system can greatly contribute to the Commander’s situational awareness in the logistics arena. The RFID air-bridge built last year by Savi Technology from Central Europe into the theatre of operations confirmed that this technology meets the general requirements to operate on a multinational basis,” he stated.

Bingham went on to say, “Our objective now is to upgrade the network so that member nations can use their own tracking systems for national consignments while also enabling them to be interoperable with NATO’s RF network for multi-national, joint force operations.”

Colder Products has designed a device that uses RFID technology to dispense many food products such as syrup, dairy, and condiments.

This new device is called the Disposable Universal Dispensing Coupler. It is a bag-and-box fitting, and according to Colder Products, it gives the user such as a beverage company, the ability to ensure safe and reliable processing of their product:

"Manufacturers can use this feature to ensure brand integrity, improve quality control and automatically calibrate dispensing equipment for the fluid being dispensed," Colder Products stated.

For anyone who has been following the current bird flu epidemic in Asia, they will be relieved to know that a US company called Digital Angel Corporation has invented a biothermal chip that can let farmers know that the bird has the flu.

According to Kevin McGrath, the CEO of Digital Angel CEO: “We believe that our proprietary technology should be made available to vulnerable countries and researchers working to control the spread of avian flu. We have had two lakh bio-thermo chips manufactured for this and companion pet applications. We are prepared to work with research institutions and government entities on any further research necessary to control avian flu.”

Further information can be obtained by visiting the Business-Standard.com website.

RFID enthusiasts can now have something to look forward to. The RFID World 2006 conference is scheduled to be held in the winter between February 27^th to March 1^st in Dallas.

Timothy Downs, President of ShoreCliff Communications, a trade exhibitions company, felt the event would beneficial to everyone. He stated that, "Attendees to RFID World benefit not only from the exhibiting companies' solutions, but also from the combined experience and knowledge of many of the industry's most innovative thinkers. This event is the one place every year that any user of RFID and EPC technology can learn first-hand about the many different solutions provided by these inventive technology companies."

According to Laurie Sullivan of TechWeb News, a company based in Vancouver called Digital Payment Technologies Corporation is in the process of implementing RFID technology into its pay-by-cellular phone service:

“The pay-by-cellular phone service running on IBM Corp. technology put Digital Payment Technologies on the radar of many cities and universities nationwide by letting drivers dial a toll-free telephone number to initiate an account, and provide their parking stall numbers to pay by phone with an ATM card, MasterCard, or Visa. With so many banks issuing cards with embedded RFID chips, Digital Payment Technologies is adding the ability to wave cards before an RFID reader rather than to swipe its magnetic strip”.

This pay by phone service is has being tested in many cities across the United States such as San Francisco and West Hollywood. For more information about the pay by cellular phone service, visit this website.