The RFID Reader

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.