(Ebook) - Rfid Technology (Radio Frequency Identification)

Texas Instruments RFID Products- Series 2000 LF Micro RFID Evaluation Kit

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Low Frequency Micro RFID Eval Kit Buy Now!RI-K3A-001A The easy-to-use plug & play Low Frequency Midrange Reader Evaluation Kit gives you the opportunity to explore the capabilities of Texas Instruments 134.2 kHz Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology TIRIS . The core of this LF Evaluation Kit is the CE and FCC approved Series 2000 Micro Reader which is mounted on an Interface Board combined with an antenna. Various transponder samples and a demonstration software that runs on your desktop computer allow you to experiment with all the features of the RFID system. RFID creates an automatic way to collect information about a product, place, time or transaction quickly, easily and without human error. It provides a contactless data link, without need for line of sight or concerns about harsh or dirty environments that restrict other auto ID technologies such as bar codes. RFID has been applied in hundreds of applications in dozens of key industries. Examples include vehicle and personnel access control, automotive anti-theft systems, product and asset tracking, animal identification, supply chain automation, waste management Contents:

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Qty. DeviceS2000 Micro Reader RI-STU-MRD1 mounted on an Interface Board with: - RS232 IF Port - Power Connector - Antenna Connector 80mm Disk Antenna Set of R/O, R/W, M/P Transponders in various packages

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Texas Instruments RFID Products- Series 2000 LF Micro RFID Evaluation Kit

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PC Interface Cable CD with User Documentation and Demo Software Getting Started Guide 9V Power Supply Input 100V240V, 1.5A with various main power connectors for international use

Not sure of which Evaluation Kit to buy? Click here for a comparison chart to review some of the features

LiteratureClick Here to view the Product Bulletin (34 KB) If you do not have the Acrobat Reader, click here to download.

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Digital Tracking Information System using micro RFID

| HITACHI HOME | SDL HOME | UP |


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We develop the physical objects centric information system by using micro RFID which can be watermarked into paper. Tracking of any kind of commodities, from their manufacturing to the scrapping, makes it easy to control their quality, security and cost. RFID : Radio Frequency Identification ID : Identification ROM : Read Only Memory All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. "-chip"is the trademark of HITACHI Ltd. In Japan and other countries.

All Rights Reserved,Copyright (C) 1998,2002,Hitachi, Ltd. [email protected]

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Could we be tracked by micro RFID tags? (fwd)

Heiko Recktenwald on Sat, 18 Jan 2003 15:05:33 +0100 (CET)

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index] Could we be tracked by micro RFID tags? (fwd)q q q q q

To: [email protected] Subject: Could we be tracked by micro RFID tags? (fwd) From: Heiko Recktenwald Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 19:25:52 +0100 (CET) Reply-to: Heiko Recktenwald

Well, it seems privacy is over. Or do we not have to care since identity and what we wear are different? Voila:

---------- Forwarded message ---------RFID tags: Big Brother in small packages By Declan McCullagh January 13, 2003, 6:26 AM PT Could we be constantly tracked through our clothes, shoes or even our cash in the future? I'm not talking about having a microchip surgically implanted beneath your skin, which is what Applied Digital Systems of Palm Beach, Fla., would like to do. Nor am I talking about John Poindexter's creepy Total Information Awareness spy-veillance system, which I wrote about last week. Instead, in the future, we could be tracked because we'll be wearing, eating and carrying objects that are carefully designed to do so. The generic name for this technology is RFID, which stands forhttp://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0301/msg00075.html (1 of 3)7/31/2003 2:18:40 AM


radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response. You should become familiar with RFID technology because you'll be hearing much more about it soon. Retailers adore the concept, and CNET News.com's own Alorie Gilbert wrote last week about how Wal-Mart and the U.K.-based grocery chain Tesco are starting to install "smart shelves" with networked RFID readers. In what will become the largest test of the technology, consumer goods giant Gillette recently said it would purchase 500 million RFID tags from Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif. Alien Technology won't reveal how it charges for each tag, but industry estimates hover around 25 cents. The company does predict that in quantities of 1 billion, RFID tags will approach 10 cents each, and in lots of 10 billion, the industry's holy grail of 5 cents a tag. It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags, which typically include a 64-bit unique identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. KSW-Microtec, a German company, has invented washable RFID tags designed to be sewn into clothing. And according to EE Times, the European central bank is considering embedding RFID tags into banknotes by 2005. [... remainder snipped and available at http://news.com.com/2010-1069-980325.html ...]

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RFID tags: Big Brother in small packages | CNET News.com

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RFID tags: Big Brother in small packagesBy Declan McCullagh January 13, 2003, 6:26 AM PT Could we be constantly tracked through our clothes, shoes or even our cash in the future? I'm not talking about having a microchip surgically implanted beneath your skin, which is what Applied Digital Systems of Palm Beach, Fla., would like to do. Nor am I talking about John Poindexter's creepy Total Information Awareness spy-veillance system, which I wrote about last week. Instead, in the future, we could be tracked because we'll be wearing, eating and carrying objects that are carefully designed to do so. The generic name for this technology is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response. You should become familiar with RFID technology because you'll be hearing much more about it soon. Retailers adore the concept, and CNET News.com's own Alorie Gilbert wrote last week about how Wal-Mart and the U.K.based grocery chain Tesco are starting to install "smart shelves" with networked RFID readers. In what will become the largest test of the technology, consumer goods giant Gillette recently said it would purchase 500 million RFID tags from Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif. Alien Technology won't reveal how it charges for each tag, but industry estimates hover around 25 cents. The company does predict that in quantities of 1 billion, RFID tags will approach 10 cents each, and in lots of 10 billion, the industry's holy grail of 5 cents a tag. It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags, which typically include a 64-bit unique identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. KSW-Microtec, a German company, has invented washable RFID tags designed to be sewn into clothing. And according to EE Times, the European central bank is considering embedding RFID tags into banknotes by 2005. That raises the disquieting possibility of being tracked though our personal possessions. Imagine: The Gap links your sweater's RFID tag with the credit card you used to buy it and recognizes you by name when you return. Grocery stores flash ads on wall-sized screens based on your spending patterns, just like in "Minority Report." Police gain a trendy method of constant, cradle-to-grave surveillance. You can imagine nightmare legal scenarios that don't involve the cops. Future divorce cases could involve one party seeking a subpoena for RFID logs--to prove that a spouse was in a certain location at a certain time. Future burglars could canvass alleys with RFID detectors, looking for RFID tags on discarded packaging that indicates expensive electronic gear is nearby. In all of these scenarios, the ability to remain anonymous is eroded.http://news.com.com/2010-1069-980325.html (1 of 3)7/31/2003 2:19:16 AM

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It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags.

Don't get me wrong. RFID tags are, on the whole, a useful development and a compelling technology. They permit retailers to slim inventory levels and reduce theft, which one industry group estimates at $50 billion a year. With RFID tags providing economic efficiencies for businesses, consumers likely will end up with more choices and lower prices. Besides, wouldn't it be handy to grab a few items from store shelves and simply walk out, with the purchase automatically debited from your (hopefully secure) RFID'd credit card?

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The privacy threat comes when RFID tags remain active once you leave a store. That's the scenario that should raise alarms--and currently the RFID industry seems to be giving mixed signals about whether the tags will be disabled or left enabled by default. In an interview with News.com's Gilbert last week, Gillette Vice President Dick Cantwell said that its RFID tags would be disabled at the cash register only if the consumer chooses to "opt out" and asks for the tags to be turned off. "The protocol for the tag is that it has built in opt-out function for the retailer, manufacturer, consumer," Cantwell said. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, says that's not the case. When asked if Wal-Mart will disable the RFID tags at checkout, company spokesman Bill Wertz told Gilbert: "My understanding is that we will." Cantwell asserts that there's no reason to fret. "At this stage of the game, the tag is no good outside the store," he said. "At this point in time, the tag is useless beyond the store shelf. There is no value and no harm in the tag outside the distribution channel. There is no way it can be read or that (the) data would be at all meaningful to anyone." That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't address what might happen if RFID tags and readers become widespread. If the tags stay active after they leave the store, the biggest privacy worries depend on the range of the RFID readers. There's a big difference between tags that can be read from an inch away compared to dozens or hundreds of feet away. For its part, Alien Technology says its RFID tags can be read up to 15 feet away. "When we talk about the range of these tags being 3 to 5 meters, that's a range in free space," said Tom Pounds, a company vice president. "That's optimally oriented in front of a reader in free space. In fact if you put a tag up against your body or on a metal Rolex watch in free space, the read range drops to zero."

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The privacy threat comes when RFID tags remain active once you leave a store.

But what about a more powerful RFID reader, created by criminals or police who don't mind violating FCC regulations? Eric Blossom, a veteran radio engineer, said it would not be difficult to build a beefier transmitter and a more sensitive receiver that would make the range far greater. "I don't see any problem building a sensitive receiver," Blossom said. "It's well-known technology, particularly if it's a specialty item where you're willing to spend five times as much." Privacy worries also depend on the size of the tags. Matrics of Columbia, Md., said it has claimed the record for the smallest RFID tag, a flat square measuring 550 microns a side with an antenna that varies between half an inch long to four inches by four inches, depending on the application. Without an antenna, the RFID tag is about the size of a flake of pepper. Matrics CEO Piyush Sodha said the RFID industry is still in a state of experimentation. "All of the customers are participating in a phase of extensive field trials," Sodha said. "Then adoption and use in true business practices will happen...Those pilots are only going to start early this year." To the credit of the people in the nascent RFID industry, these trials are allowing them to think through the privacy concerns. An MIT-affiliated standards group called the Auto-ID Center said in an e-mailed statement to News.com that they have "designed a kill feature to be built into every (RFID) tag. If consumers are concerned, the tags can be easily destroyed with an inexpensive reader. How this will be executed i.e. in the home or at point of sale is still being defined, and will be tested in the third phase of the field test." If you care about privacy, now's your chance to let the industry know how you feel. (And, no, I'm not calling for new laws or regulations.) Tell them that RFID tags are perfectly acceptable inside stores to track pallets and crates, but that if retailers wish to use them on consumer goods, they should follow four voluntary guidelines. First, consumers should be notified--a notice on a checkout receipt would work--when RFID tags are present in

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what they're buying. Second, RFID tags should be disabled by default at the checkout counter. Third, RFID tags should be placed on the product's packaging instead of on the product when possible. Fourth, RFID tags should be readily visible and easily removable. Given RFID's potential for tracking your every move, is that too much to ask?

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biography Declan McCullagh is the Washington correspondent for CNET News.com, chronicling the ever-busier intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

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George Orwell, here we come | CNET News.com

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George Orwell, here we comeBy Declan McCullagh January 6, 2003, 10:58 AM PT WASHINGTON--The biggest problem with criticism of Adm. John Poindexter's massive spy proposal is not in the argument over the system being so darn creepy. Of course it's creepy. This new federal agency deliberately chose the motto "knowledge is power," crafted a logo certain to inspire conspiracy theories, and is itching to assemble a detailed computerized dossier on every American. And that a figure such as Poindexter--disgraced in the Iran-Contra scandal and with a database addiction dating back to at least 1987--is running the show is a detail worthy of a Jonathan Swift satire. No, the biggest problem with the criticism of the Total Information Awareness system is that it's too shortsighted. It's focused on what the Poindexters of the world can do with current database and information-mining technology. That includes weaving together strands of data from various sources--such as travel, credit card, bank, electronic toll and driver's license databases--with the stated purpose of identifying terrorists before they strike. But what could Poindexter and the Bush administration devise in five or 10 years, if they had the money, the power and the will? That's the real question, and therein lies the true threat. Even if all of our current elected representatives, appointed officials and unappointed bureaucrats are entirely trustworthy--and that's a pretty big assumption--what could a corrupt FBI, Secret Service or Homeland Security police force do with advanced technology by the end of the decade? What if there was another terrorist attack that prompted Congress to delete whatever remaining privacy laws shield Americans from surveillance? For a hint at what the future might bring, it's worth reviewing some of the projects already under way at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is the parent agency for Poindexter's Information Awareness Office. Combine that information with the technology trends toward smaller sensors, cheaper hardware and ubiquitous wireless networks, and the possibilities are immensely disquieting. We could face the emergence of unblinking electronic eyes that record where we are and what we do, whenever we interact. Imagine a world where every street corner is dotted with disposable microcameras, equipped with facerecognition software that identifies pedestrians and constantly updates their individual files with up-to-the-minute location information. (Wearing masks won't help: Many states already have antimask laws, and the rest would follow suit if masks became sufficiently popular.) The microcameras are linked through a network modeled on existing 802.11 wireless technology. The wireless mesh also includes cameras devoted to spotting and recording license plates and a third type that identifies people by the way they walk. It's not that far from reality. Poindexter's office has an entire project area called Human ID at a Distance that's spending millions on researching biometric technologies, including face recognition and "gait performance" detection. Facecams already are in use in airports, city centers and casinos. And license plate recognition, by comparison, is a snap.http://news.com.com/2010-1071-979276.html?tag=nl (1 of 3)7/31/2003 2:19:56 AM

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And what of the spybots' larger cousins, capable of hovering higher and seeing more for a longer duration? Last week The Washington Post reported that the federal government may permit unmanned aircraft to fly above the United States. "I believe that the potential applications for this technology in the area of homeland defense are quite compelling," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, who added that the drones could be used by domestic police agencies. Location tracking GPS devices that record a vehicle's position and transmit it to police are an exciting growth area for the eavesdrop establishment. Jim Bell, an Internet essayist convicted of stalking federal agents, said before his arrest that he was sure the federal agencies were tailing him electronically. During Bell's trial, it emerged that he was right: The police arm of the IRS was tracking him on their laptops with a legally implanted GPS bug inside Bell's Nissan Maxima. Last week, The Associated Press reported that an Oregon state task force wants a law requiring all cars to sport GPS receivers and recorders. The stated purpose: To measure how far you drive and calculate how much you owe in road taxes. The Nov. 15, 2002 report from the task force envisions some privacy protections--but those could be eliminated if homeland security worries become more acute, possibly leaving all Oregonians tracked whenever they're on the road. Criminals already may be finding less desirable uses for GPS trackers. Last week, the Smoking Gun Web archive of documents owned by Court TV posted a criminal complaint against a 42-year-old Wisconsin man accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend using a GPS bug hidden in her car. "We continue to see problems with stalkers (using databases)," says Peter Wayner, author of Translucent Databases. "I think there are many more sleazeballs who will use this stuff than there are cops who will use it to catch people. It's a lot easier to abuse this technology than to use it successfully." Then there's Applied Digital Systems (ADS) of Palm Beach, Fla., which received FDA approval last fall for a microchip to be implanted in humans for tracking and identification purposes. (Company spokesman Matthew Cossolotto told me in June 2001 that ADS had no such plans. "We are not now developing, nor do we have any plans to develop, anything other than an external, wearable device," he said in an e-mail message.) It's difficult to imagine a more ruthlessly effective way to track every American. I doubt it's likely, but it's possible to imagine a future where "getting chipped" starts as a way to speed your way through lines at ATMs and airports--and ends up being mandatory.

Poindexter's office has an entire project area called Human ID at a Distance that's spending millions on researching biometric technologies, including face recognition and "gait performance" detection.

Or how about locations out of the range of this fixed surveillance mesh? In 1998, DARPA began funding a project to create spybots that can fly day and night and that use infrared and video sensors. These spybots, being designed by Lockheed Martin and code-named MicroStar, will have a six-inch wingspan, weigh only 86 grams and cost about $10,000-an affordable price point for surveilling Americans from above.

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Some of your congressional representatives may soon be asked why there has never been even one hearing investigating DARPA, Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness plans.

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There's some precedent. In October, police in one Colorado county started pressuring businesses to require fingerprints when customers make purchases with checks or credit cards. Police in Arlington, Texas, are asking businesses to participate in a similar program. Things get stranger still. The Electronic Privacy Information Center used the Freedom of Information Act in August 2002 to obtain government documents that talked about reading air travelers' minds and identifying suspicious thoughts. The NASA briefing materials referred to "non-invasive neuro-electric sensors" to be used in aviation security. In a bizarre press release, NASA claimed it has not approved any research in the area of "mind reading" and that "because of the sensitivity of such research," the agency will seek independent review of future projects. Yikes. There are some bright areas in this generally dismal outlook. Avi Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, predicts growing interest in antisurveillance measures. "I expect there will be a whole industry popping up in counter-surveillance--at least, I hope," Rubin said. "Nowadays, it's not like

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someone drops a camera and comes back and retrieves the data. You attack the transmission." Short of fleeing to the wilderness or living our lives entirely online, our only option is to fight the Poindexterization of modern life before it becomes too late. Congress returns this week. Some of your congressional representatives may soon be asked why there has never been even one hearing investigating DARPA, Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness plans.

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biography Declan McCullagh is the Washington correspondent for CNET News.com, chronicling the ever-busier intersection between technology and politics. Before that, he worked for several years as Washington bureau chief for Wired News. He has also worked as a reporter for The Netly News, Time magazine and HotWired.

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RFID Journal

Radio Frequency Identification for BusinessFEATURED STORYJuly 31, 2003

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The Coming RFID Skills Crunch Suppliers are scrambling to figure out how to tag pallets and cases for retailers. But where will companies find qualified experts to install RFID systems? Some experts are predicting an expensive war for talent.

TOP NEWS Geest Embraces RFID Compliance The Geest Group, which supplies produce to Marks & Spencer, is looking to deploy RFID for its own benefit.

Giant Eagle to Trial RFID WMS One of the largest U.S. grocery chains has chosen new supply chain software with an eye to adopting RFID.

Vendor Touts RFID Ready Program SmartCode has launched a program aimed at retailers, manufacturers and suppliers looking to deploy low-cost RFID systems.

Playboy Uses RFID to Track Tapes The cable TV station will save time and money by knowing where master tapes are at all times.

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RFID Journal - Geest Embraces RFID Compliance

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Geest Embraces RFID ComplianceThe Geest Group, which supplies produce to Marks & Spencer, is looking to deploy RFID for its own benefit. July 31, 2003 As more retailers want to track their shipped goods with RFID tags, suppliers are being forced to invest in RFID equipment. But at least one supplier, the Geest Group of Companies in England, which provides fresh produce to Marks & Spencer, is realizing the added cost is also an opportunity. "Marks & Spencers decision meant a capital outlay for us with regard to buying the RFID equipment," says Jackie Brown, Geest's planning manager, "but we are certainly expecting to see benefits as well."

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A tagged Marks & Spencer plastic tray

Marks & Spencer, one of the UK's largest retailers, has been putting RFID tags on four million reusable trays used by more than 200 of its suppliers. The goal is to improve supply chain speed and reduce errors. The suppliers, therefore, have to invest in readers that can scan the tags and write data to the tags. The RFID tags replace a card file system. Suppliers used to write information about a shipmentthe tray's contents and how long the produce should be displayed in the storeon a card and place it in the tray along with the goods being shipped to M&S. The cards often got lost or damaged. The same data will now be written to RFID tags on the tray. Marks & Spencer decided to use 13.56 MHz read/ write tags from Texas Instruments. By installing readers at its loading docks, the retailer can automatically record having received the trays. Portal readers can simultaneously read all the data from tags on trays stacked on a dolly. Unlike the cards, RFID is not susceptible to in-transit damage, weather and other factors, ensuring the data stays with the contents until the tag is overwritten. Systems can be set up to scan tags and match the shipment to an M&S order. That can mean significant savings for Geest. At present, M&S charges suppliers 100 (US$162) a week for each depot that ships the wrong goods to the retailer ordered. Since the goods are perishable and can't be sent to another supplier, Geest loses the value of the products and the profits on the goods, Brown says.

Labor Pains Competition for people who can deploy RFID systems will be intense. FULL STORY

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RFID Journal - Geest Embraces RFID Compliance

The Geest Group of Companies comprises Bourne Stir Fry, Geest QV, Caledonian Produce, Tilmanstone Salads, Geest Prepared Foods, World Wide Fruit and English Village Salads. Each of these companies is deploying RFID in its distribution center. The implementations should be completed by the second quarter of 2004. Each individual company within the group will choose the equipment that best fits into existing warehouse systems and processes. The design and readers of each companys RFID system will be provided by Intellident, based in Manchester. In one of its companies distribution centers, Geest deployed Intellident portal readers, which can read and write to multiple RFID tags simultaneously. Trays, which are stacked nine high on dollies, pass through the portal at the loading dock. "There are huge benefits in the speed that we can load and dispatch our products," says Brown. "We can write and verify [the accuracy of an order with] 18 trays in a matter of seconds." At another Geest facility, where the production process makes it better to write data to the tags on the trays as the trays full of produce come off the production line, the company is using Intellidents Production LineWriter, which can be integrated into conveyor belts, roller beds, packing/filling lines and other pick and pack processes. Geest is also looking at ways that each of its companies could link its new RFID equipment into its planning system to give greater shop floor visibility. Further benefits could come from using RFID to understand where there is any downtime in current operations, says Brown. The systems don't affect the supplier's ability to deliver to other retailers, but if other retailers choose different RFID technology, that would man additional expenses for Geest. "I suppose there will be an issue of money if another retailer uses different software," says Brown, "as this would require more money spent on different kits." RFID Journal Home






RFID Journal - Giant Eagle to Trial RFID WMS

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Giant Eagle to Trial RFID WMSOne of the largest U.S. grocery chains has chosen new supply chain software with an eye to adopting RFID. By Jonathan Collins

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July 30, 2003 - Pittsburgh, Pa.-based supermarket chain Giant Eagle is preparing an RFID pilot as part of an overhaul of its warehouse management system. The new system, which could include RFID if the test goes well, will support the company's 214 stores across four states. With estimated sales of more than $4 billion last year, Giant Eagle is one the largest food retailers in the United States. It is looking at RFID as a way to help streamline its distribution processes, reduce inventory levels and gain real-time visibility across its supply chain.

Eric Peters Labor Pains Competition for people who can deploy RFID systems will be intense. FULL STORY

As part of that effort, Giant Eagle will deploy warehouse management and trading partner management software from Manhattan Associates. It was the software vendor's recent addition of RFID capabilities that helped secure the contract, according to Eric Peters, Manhattan's senior VP of products and strategy. "Giant Eagle intends to use RFID in the future, and they wanted to make sure that their WMS solution is RFIDcapable for the needs of the grocery industry," he says. Giant Eagle has five distribution centers (DCs). The first site is scheduled to go live with Manhattan Associates warehouse management application in the second quarter of 2004. These centers, which range in size from 75,000 sq. ft. to more than one million sq. ft., serve as way stations for health, beauty and cosmetics products, meat, frozen foods, and dry or perishable goods (two facilities). Although interested in the potential of RFID, Giant Eagle is cautious about setting goals for the technology's deployment. It says its plans for an initial RFID pilot are still in their "infancy stage," so executives from the grocery chain are reluctant to discuss details of the planned deployment. Nevertheless, the company underlined that RFID was a key factor in its choice of supply chain execution systems. "We are very impressed with Manhattan Associates' early commitment to RFID, a key driver to achieving even greater levels of supply chain efficiency and productivity," Larry Baldauf, senior VP of distribution at Giant Eagle, said in a statement released by Manhattan Associates.


RFID Journal - Giant Eagle to Trial RFID WMS

RFID promises to help Giant Eagle gain access to realtime supply chain information that will help it to better manage not just its DCs, but also its suppliers and the supply network as a whole. Manhattan's Peters says that Giant Eagle's cautious approach is common; customers are concerned that the Auto-ID Center has yet to create a specification for read/write Electronic Product Code tags. "We have many customers ready to run pilots but just waiting for that standard," says Peters. But Peters also says that Wal-Mart's June 11 announcement has pushed other Manhattan customers and some potential customers to start their own RFID pilots. "Some suppliers are starting to say, 'We don't need RFID pilots; we need to get into production right now,'" he says. RFID Journal Home






RFID Journal - Passive, Active RFID Tags Linked

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Passive, Active RFID Tags LinkedSavi Technology is combining its long-range battery-powered RFID tags with passive tags from Matrics to create "nested visibility." July 24, 2003 - Savi Technology is collaborating with EPC tag producer Matrics to develop a new range of equipment that will enable companies to combine longand short-range RFID tags to create "nested visibility" within the supply chain. Savi, a Sunnyvale, Calif., provider of RFID devices and software for the management and security of supply chain, offers active, or battery-powered, tags for tracking shipping containers, trailers and other conveyances. Up to now, most of Savi's customers would scan bar codes on boxes and then write the bar code data to Savi's EchoPoint active tags. The partnership with Matrics will allow customers to use RFID tags, instead of bar codes. "The problem with tracking bar-coded items is that once they are inside the container you lose that visibility," says Stephen Lambright, VP of Marketing at Savi. "This collaboration extends visibility into the container through the active tag." Columbus, Md.-based Matrics produces and sells passive RFID tags based on the Auto-ID Center's Class 0 specification. By providing visibility down to the items within a box, Savi is providing a higher level of visibility, which it says will offer companies new capabilities. For example, if the security of a container is breached, the integrated RFID solution could tell in real-time that the container had been tampered with and which, if any, specific items are missing. In addition, using tags in place of bar codes should also bring savings in time and greater inventory accuracy, according to Lambright. "Replacing bar codes at the carton and palette level with passive tags lets us automate the entire process," he says. That functionality can also be used to track backwards to find out how individual items have been shipped and what happened to them. Let's say packages of meat are spoiled when they arrive at the store. The supplier could trace which cartons they were shipped in and what trucks they were on. That could help the supplier determine what happened, whether other meat was similarly affected and needs to be recalled and how to correct the problem.

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Labor Pains Competition for people who can deploy RFID systems will be intense. FULL STORY


RFID Journal - Passive, Active RFID Tags Linked

The first product to come from the collaboration will be a handheld device that reads Matrics' passive EPC tags and writes the data to Savis 433 MHz active RFID tags and seals. The unit will be able to read passive tags from up to 33 feet (10 meters) away and active tags from up to 330 feet (100 meters). The handheld device should be available within a few months and separate fixed readers for dock doors, forklift trucks and conveyor systems should come to market by the end of the year. The readers will be produced by Matrics but marketed by both companies. They will support the Universal Data Appliance Protocol, which Savi developed for the military. UDAP enables any data collection device to be connected to the network. RFID Journal Home






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02/06/2002 - Updated 05:22 PM ET

Alien's tiny cheap chips could open new worldsMORGAN HILL, Calif. I'm at a company called Alien Technology. I'm thinking the board meetings must be interesting with, like, Mork from Ork, E.T. and David Bowie around the table. Outside is a farming community a good hour from the heart of Silicon Valley. Here in the lobby, I'm staring at a full-size replica of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, which, as you might recall, starred Leslie Nielsen in 1956.Maney archiveFor more columns by Kevin, click here

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q The reason I'm visiting this seemingly odd outfit q is that Arno Penzias, former head of Bell Labs q and now a venture capitalist, told me it's one of q the most important new companies he's seen. He's now on the board, perhaps fitting right in. This is a guy who has a Nobel Prize in physics. You have to figure he's smart. Looking at Robby, I'm not certain.

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There's one other reason for checking this out. Alien is raising huge amounts of venture capital. Yep. In this Godforsaken era, when it's harder to land venture money than to find a mosh pit in Amish country, Alien raised $55 million in August and is confident of raising even more in another round of financing this year. So there's got to be something here. And this is it: Alien seems like the missing key to a bunch of advances that technologists have been hoping to see. Those advances include thin plastic computer screens that can be rolled up, groceries that check themselves out and eyeglasses that can't be lost. If Alien is that key, it could unleash a torrent of innovation. Then the company will most definitely be important. Alien, a private company, has found a way to make tiny 1-cent computer chips and easily put them into things on a mass-production scale. That's a first. The process is based on work done 6 years ago by J. Stephen Smith, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. CEO Jeff Jacobsen, an industry veteran at 47, was hired in September 1998 to build a real company around Smith's work. Not long after, Penzias came to check it out, and despite seeing a lab that used such sophisticated equipment as a turkey baster, told his venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates, to invest. Alien's process is as fantastic as everything else about the company. As I sit at a conference table here, Jacobson hands me a sealed test tube full of water and what looks like suspended silver glitter. The glitter is actually floating computer chips, each a few times the width of a human hair and shaped like a minuscule Ex-Lax tablet. The shape fits precisely into holes that can be stamped into sheets of plastic in any pattern.

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The plastic can be fed on rolls like a printing press through a bath containing the chips. The chips fall into place, filling every hole. Alien calls this Fluidic Self-Assembly, or FSA. The plastic rolls through a couple of other processes that seal the chips in and connect them to tiny wire leads. The sheet can then be cut into whatever is being made big flexible computer screens, or tiny displays that go on ATM cards to show you how much money you have in your account. FSA is a departure from current methods of embedding things with individual chips. One method requires high heat, which would melt plastic. That's why displays on computers and cell phones are glass. The glass can withstand the heat, but it's heavy, breakable and inflexible all liabilities. Another method picks up individual chips and glues them in place, but that's too slow and costly. Don't get me wrong Alien still has a lot to prove. It hasn't mass-produced anything yet. It's building its first factory. It's taking baby steps. "Our strategy is to start with something simple," Jacobson says. Right now, that's a numeric display built into the plastic of a smart card. The display shows the amount of money remaining on the card. Alien is developing the displays under a $40 million contract with France's Gemplus, the biggest smart card maker. Beyond that, the possibilities are huge. In displays alone, Jacobson's ideas include plastic screens that can be unrolled out of the side of a cell phone, and plastic computer screens that soldiers can roll up and carry into battle. Motorola, Presto Technologies, E Ink and venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson have all talked about devices and applications that would work if only there were 1-cent, easily-embedded chips. In other words, if there were a company like Alien. Some of those applications would use radio frequency (RF) tags, which are cheap chips attached to tiny radio antennas. RF tags can send and receive little bits of information. Alien's FSA is a way to mass-produce RF tags possibly the best way to make super-cheap RF tags and put them into anything. The tags could be attached to all packaged goods, each tag encoded with the item and price. Then, if you walk out a grocery store's door with a full shopping cart, all the RF tags could send the store's computer a blip saying those items are being bought. That's it you're checked out. No having to stare at a teenager's multiple piercings while she operates the register. Penzias likes the eyeglasses example. Embed an RF tag in every pair of glasses. You lose your glasses, you go to a special Web site, which listens the world over for a little ping from your glasses' RF tag. The site shows that you left them on the bar at Thirsty's. The only alarming part is that you only vaguely remember even being at the bar at Thirsty's. There is no shortage of ideas flying Alien's way. Silicon Valley executives keep driving here to see what's up. Intel wanted to invest but was turned away. Philips and Dow Chemical are investors. "Japanese companies come in here all the time, and they start saying, 'We can do this and this and this,' " says Stan Drobac, a vice president. "We're running out of bandwidth to chase more things." For now, Alien just wants to get going on smart cards. Then, Jacobson says, it might move into plastic displays for cell phones and palmtop computers. After that, who knows? Jacobson at times seems barely able to contain his giddiness about Alien's good fortune. He's so confident, he's even willing to spend some of that rarified venture money on a full-size Terminator replica that can join Robby in the lobby. He's gothttp://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/2001-03-14-maney.htm (2 of 3)7/31/2003 2:32:26 AM

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his order in. When you've got a technology that seems momentous, you can be as weird as you want to be.

Kevin Maney writes a weekly column about technology. Send e-mail to Kevin at [email protected].

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EE Times - Euro bank notes to embed RFID chips by 2005

Euro bank notes to embed RFID chips by 2005By Junko Yoshida EE Times December 19, 2001 (3:03 p.m. ET) SAN MATEO, Calif. The European Central Bank is working with technology partners on a hush-hush project to embed radio frequency identification tags into the very fibers of euro bank notes by 2005, EE Times has learned. Intended to foil counterfeiters, the project is developing as Europe prepares for a massive changeover to the euro, and would create an instant mass market for RFID chips, which have long sought profitable application. The banking community and chip suppliers say the integration of an RFID antenna and chip on a bank note is technically possible, but no bank notes in the world today employ such a technology. Critics say it's unclear if the technology can be implemented at a cost that can justify the effort, and question whether it is robust enough to survive the rough-and-tumble life span of paper money. A spokesman for the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Germany confirmed the existence of a project, but was careful not to comment on its technologies. At least two European semiconductor makers contacted by EE Times, Philips Semiconductors and Infineon Technologies, acknowledged their awareness of the ECB project but said they are under strict nondisclosure agreements. Recent Articles EET Centralized wireless LAN interface proposed SoC vendor woos military markets TI to buy Radia to complete WLAN chip set offering Cypress phasing out PLD business Intel, MIPS, Qualcomm welcome to join MIPI Siemens to cut 2300 in mobile unit Mentor tool will team up on pcb layout DVCon sets 2004 dates, calls for papers Archives

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The euro will become "the most common currency in the world" at midnight on Jan. 1, when 12 nations embrace it, according to Ingo Susemihl, vice president and general manager of RFID group at Infineon. The ECB and criminal investigators in Europe are already on high alert, worried not only about counterfeiting of a currency most people haven't seen, but also of a possible increase in money laundering, given the euro's broad cross-border reach. The ECB said 14.5 billion bank notes are being produced, 10 billion of which will go into circulation at once in January, with 4.5 billion

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being held in reserve to accommodate potential leaps in demand. Thwarting underworld popularity Although euro bank notes already include such security features as holograms, foil stripes, special threads, microprinting, special inks and watermarks, the ECB believes it must add further protection to keep the euro from becoming the currency of choice in the criminal underworld, where the U.S. dollar is now the world's most counterfeited currency. The ECB spokesman said his organization has contacted various central banks worldwide not just in Europe to discuss added security measures for the currency. In theory, an RFID tag's ability to read and write information to a bank note could make it very difficult, for example, for kidnappers to ask for "unmarked" bills. Further, a tag would give governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in illegal transactions. "The RFID allows money to carry its own history," by recording information about where it has been, said Paul Saffo, director of Institute for the Future (Menlo Park, Calif.). The embedding of an RFID tag on a bank note is "a fundamental departure" from the conventional security measures applied to currency, Saffo said. "Most [currency] security today is based on a false premise that people would look at the money to see if it is counterfeit," he said. But "nobody does that. The RFID chip is an important advance because it no longer depends on humans" to spot funny money. RFID basics ChipCenter EBN EBN China Electronics Express NetSeminar Services QuestLink Custom Magazines

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The basic technology building blocks for RFID on bank notes are similar to those required for today's smart labels or contactless cards. They require a contactless data link that can automatically collect information about a product, place, time or transaction. Smart labels produced by companies such as Philips Semiconductors, Infineon, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments are already used in such applications as smart airline luggage tags, library books and for supply chain management of various products. "Two minimum elements you need for RFID are a chip and an antenna," according to Gordon Kenneth Andrew Oswald, associate director at Arthur D. Little Inc., a technology consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass. When a bank note passes through reader equipment, the antenna on the note collects energy and converts it to electric energy to activates the chip, he said. The antenna then "provides a communication path between a chip [on the bank note] and the rest of the world," said Tres Wiley, emerging markets strategy manager for RFID Systems at TI. For its part, the chip "is a dedicated processor to handle protocols, to carry out data encoding to send and receive data and address memory" embedded on the chip. Although the industry is "well down the road with the smart label technology," Wiley said he was "a bit surprised to learn that someone goes to that extent to embed RFID into bank notes



to combat counterfeit money."A list of upcoming NetSeminars, plus a link to the archive. ApplicationDriven Power Management: Controlling Power Consumption in Mobile Devices Predicting Battery Performance Under Real World Operating Conditions Thriving in the World of HighSpeed Serial Interconnects Design with Alteras New ASIC Alternative: Get ASIC Gain without the Pain ADI Considerations in RF Frequency Direct Digital Synthesis Archive

A number of challenges must be overcome before RFID tags can be embedded on bills, said Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The most obvious one is the price," he said. Today's RFID tags cost between 20 cents to $1.00, and "that's not economic enough for most bills," Ashton said. "We've absolutely got to get the cost way down." The goal of the Auto ID Center is to find an application that requires billions of RFID chips to bring their cost as low as 5 cents, he added. While most chip companies with RFID expertise are keeping their plans for money applications close to their chest, Hitachi Ltd. announced plans last July for a chip designed for paper money that would pack RF circuitry and ROM in a 0.4-mm square circuit measuring 60 microns thick. Although the chip features no rewritable capability, Ryo Imura, chief executive of Hitachi's Mew Solutions venture, said at the time of announcement, "We'll consider them for the next generation [of] products." Hitachi's chip stores encrypted ID information in ROM during the manufacturing process, presumably to replace the serial number of each bank note. Even without writable memory, Hitachi's chip is said to be fairly costly. Hitachi declined to be interviewed for this article. While the size of the rewritable memory embedded on an RFID chip will determine the kinds of information it can store, it also affects the chip's cost. Affordable with bigger bills It is unclear whether the ECB will incorporate RFID chips into all euro bank notes or just on the larger bills. The EUR 200 and EUR 500 bank notes in particular equivalent to roughly $200 and $500 in value are expected to be popular in the "informal" economy. Embedding a 30 cents chip into a EUR 500 bill would make more sense than putting it into a European buck, several industry sources said. Manufacturing processes are also considered a major hurdle to embedding a low-cost antenna and chip onto bank notes. "The chip is already so small," MIT's Ashton said. "To connect the two ends of a coil an antenna at precisely the right place on a chip could present a major problem." A printing process is an option, Ashton said, but "you need a breakthrough in the high-volume manufacturing process." Such a technology does not exist today, he said. Size and thickness are key attributes of an RFID chip for paper currency, said Karsten Ottenberg, senior vice president and general manager of business unit identification at Philips Semiconductors. "For putting chips into documents, they need to be very small less than a square millimeter and thin such that they are not cracking under mechanical stress of the document. Thinning down to 50 micron and below is a key challenge." That would require advanced mechanical and chemical techniques, he said.



Bank notes present "an interesting future application for us," said Tom Pounds, vice president of RFID projects at Alien Technology, which holds the rights to a fabrication process that suspends tiny semiconductor devices in a liquid that's deposited over a substrate containing holes of corresponding shape. The devices settle on the substrate and self-align. Rather than working on the interconnection to an RF antenna one chip at a time, "we can do a massively parallel interconnection," Pounds said. Bank notes are not Alien's primary focus at present, he said.

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Line56.com: RFID Rising

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July 31, 2003

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RFID RisingGillette deal a watershed, pilots paying off, no end in sight for application potential; endorsements not where you'd expectby Jim Ericson, Line56 Thursday, February 13, 2003

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We have been watching for awhile, but it was just five months ago that we introduced our own readers to the topic of radio frequency identification, (RFID) passive and active semiconductor chips that could be embedded in products and read on the fly to help track goods in the supply chain, and reduce theft and counterfeiting. (Older readers might recall being fascinated 25 years ago by the barcodes and security devices RFID is just beginning to replace.) Now the game is afoot, and companies quick to the mark are looking pretty smart for it. We're mere months from the first standards release (driven by the folks at MIT, thank goodness) the stars are aligning, and companies are not waiting. The latest vision was last month's commitment by Gillette to buy 500 million RFID tags from privately held Alien Technology. Five hundred million is a lot of anything, but it's really the tip of the iceberg. "When we saw Alien and Gillette coming, we just looked at each other and said well, here comes the first seismic shift that takes this from being on peripheral vision to something on radar," says Lyle Ginsburg, managing partner of technology innovation at Accenture Technology Labs in Chicago. Pilots Aplenty

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Ginsburg is traveling frenetically these days, working with customer CEOs, niche technology vendors and supply chain software vendors, as well as the overseeing Auto-ID Center driven at MIT, now spread to a global effort. Almost everybody seems to want a pilot. In Gillette's case, Ginsburg thinks risk is minimal since the company is working through a single consortium and standard going forward driven by 80-some of the top companies in the world. The global 'punch' of this is not to be underestimated. "Now they're saying, 'here's the way we are going to do this so everybody please start building this way.'" That's not to say there's only one application for RFID being applied, or that it's all under tight wraps. The motives and goals behind the technology expand daily. Remember, Viagra was originally launched as a heart medication. Now it's beginning to look like RFID is shaping up as an aspirin tablet for e-business applications. Under headings like "ubiquitous commerce" and "silent commerce," Accenture streams demos of RFID applied to distribution; customer insights; worker safety (tagged hazardous materials in proximity); shrinkage; and counterfeiting. Separately, a little searching finds "RFID in action" in the public domain. Here are four random examples:q

DestinationKM Portals Magazine

Italian fashion designer Prada has a Manhattan store in which all items of clothing have been tagged with Texas Instruments RFID chips and KTP reader technology. Upon entering one of seven dressing booths built by industrial designer ideo,

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shoppers are presented with sizes and colors available, and alternate styles and complementary products via a video monitor. Preferences can be stored on a customer card, and sales associates are equipped with hand-held devices to locate products and display catwalk clips to customers.q

Scottish Courage Brewing has long been using RFID in a "keg-sharing" plan in the U.K. where 65 percent of beer is served in draft form. With a U.K. inventory of 10 million kegs and no deposit laws, shrinkage of the stock was a problem. RFID tagging, "100 percent accurate" in the words of program director Graham Miller, is used to track kegs at various points in the supply chain, reducing shrinkage to almost zero, reducing cycle times, improving delivery for outgoing and incoming stock and providing an audit trail for inventory. UK retailer Marks & Spencer is replacing barcodes with RFID chips and Intellident technology on 3.5 million reusable food trays, dollies and rolling cages carrying perishable food items. Last November, the company called this the largest RFID project in the world. Texas Instruments says the tags reduce the time to read a stack of multiple trays by 80 percent. Complete dollies of trays are read in five seconds of passing a scanner, and the project is now making its way to the retail floor. Malden Mills, the U.S. textile inventor and manufacturer of Polartec severe-weather fabric sold by outlets like L.L. Bean, Nike, (also used by the military) uses Escort Memory System RFID tags in the manufacturing process to mark the beginning and end of imperfections in fabric runs. Detectors on slitting machines sense and remove defective areas of material, minimizing waste at the point of the imperfection.

q

q

"Conventional wisdom says you start tagging high-volume things and work down, but there are many exceptions for people who are highly motivated for one reason or another," says AMR Research analyst Pete Abell. "For Prada, it's about image and marketing. At GAP Stores, they're interested in increasing sales and improving inventory management. Guess what, it works." Conventional wisdom also goes awry when evaluating the thinking that leads RFID applications. Geographical and cultural nuances often drive users and suppliers in discrete directions. In the U. K., for example, much of the impetus for RFID came via the 5.5 million pound "Chipping of Goods Initiative" initiated by the U.K. Home Office in December, 2002. Led by the Police Scientific Development Branch and road crimes unit, the goal was to reduce man-hours and prosecutorial costs for stolen items. For its part, Gillette will be in part tagging cases and packages of expensive razor blades that fly off the shelf, often illegally. They're also putting smart shelf readers in Wal-Mart and Tesco stores to manage inventory and track inventory movement. "Their biggest problem is shrinkage with those Mach III razors," Ginsburg says. "When I first joined the Auto-ID Center, I heard about this and went to Walgreens to see what it was all about, and there were no razors on the shelf." Either they're selling or they're stolen, he says, both important reasons to be tracking the goods. Who's Doing What Our own conventional wisdom leads us back to the supply chain and the confluence of familiar and unfamiliar names. Who is doing what? How are supply-chain execution software firms fitting in? While early security devices might have been applied by retailers, those companies see themselves in the tag reader business and aren't going to be buying and applying millions of tags for their stores. "Everyone assumes it's the manufacturers that will be tagging," Ginsburg says, though he thinks that's only partly true. For their part, manufacturers will be more interested in tracking large volumes, pallets and cases, at choke points like loading dock doors, he says. Generally, this starts deep in the supply chain and slowly works its way toward store shelves.



A first step then is the tracking of all reusable containers, as Marks & Spencer has undertaken. Bins, pallets, raw materials vats, freight containers, cargo carriers and such are all useful and acceptable cost asset utilization projects that yield insights today. Getting back to cases and individual items, the packaging industry has taken the ball as the likely applicant for tagging. International Paper and Meade/Wesvaco are Auto-ID members, and Ginsburg says Asian packaging companies are aggressively looking at RFID packaging as a way to become that much more important to the Unilevers and Coca-Colas of the world. A perusal of the patent office will provide much evidence of activity in ink-based antennas and chipembedded packaging and tape. Supply chain execution software specialist Manhattan Associates sees a future of automated conveyors, where cases and items can be automatically routed at distribution centers (DCs) to their proper destination with an audit trail to boot. "A lot of customers are asking how to use our PkMS [warehouse management] system to do cross docking where nobody has to touch the box," says Tilman Estes, director of product development at Manhattan. "Others are just interested in reducing labor on inbound scanning." Manhattan is also connecting its infolink remote order tracking software with RFID systems. Infolink draws on ERP and warehouse management systems to provide visibility to inventory and orders in progress. Already printing UCC-compliant labels, the next step is to embed RFID chips in the labels as they are affixed to packages. In this case, Manhattan is working with printer hardware maker Zebra Technologies, whose printers can embed ultra-thin barcodes into packaging labels for execution against DC processes like receiving, replenishment, picking, packing and shipping. "It's just a natural progression," says Estes. Accenture is partnering with Manhattan Associates and building interfaces for other likely users, like SAP and Retek. "We're all trying to get ourselves positioned," says Accenture's Ginsburg. For its part SAP promises new announcements soon, and confirmed plans with Intel and Alien Technology to open an item level tagged Metro retail store in Germany this April. On the Drawing Board There are many more nuances which will drive startups and mainstream competitors to new requirements and products in support of RFID. One such need is an agile reader that can scan multiple frequencies and formats, which vary by regulation, materials and geography. Another is the need to take an event-oriented approach to handing up RFID information. With all the potential reporting, companies need to discriminate between useful and overabundant information. The Auto-ID center has created a public domain framework for what it calls a savant, a bridge between the application and RFID technology vendors. Software developer Oat Systems is working with savants to add business rules. "If the item doesn't move, and I'm reading 1,000 tags per second, I don't care about the fact that it hasn't moved," Abell says. "If it's moving to an area that might be the wrong temperature or indicate theft, I want to know." For Gillette, picking more than three cartridges of razor blades might be a good reason to trigger a security camera. As we mentioned in our last story, a landmark will arrive in October with a conference in Chicago rolling out Version 1.0 of the EPC code. But there is much more going on in the interim. Abell says a recent event in Cambridge, England drew a large variety of users and interested parties as diverse as DHL and the Gemological Society. Pilots or not, the demand is plain. Beyond the clout of the Auto-ID Center members, the entrepreneurial and venture capital interests are also active in the area. "Some will catch fire, some will catch up and many will just disappear," says Ginsburg. "There are clearly some big established companies that have had their head in the sand on this subject, or say it's a long ways off so I'm not going to pay any attention and in the meantime, boom! A 500 million tag order goes to Alien. Thank you very much." (Jim Ericson is editorial director and news editor at Line56)



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Line56.com: RFID Changes Everything

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RFID Changes EverythingRadio frequency identification of unique products in the supply chain is no pipe dream; some of the world's largest companies want to see it put the industry on its earby Jim Ericson, Line56 Thursday, September 19, 2002

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In the next few years and beyond, the supply chain is aiming at a major facelift, some of which is already under way. If success favors those who are prepared, then it's a good time to take a look at the current state of radio frequency identification (RFID) as the tool being bet on. For businesses, RFID is simply about using radio waves to automatically identify physical items in varying proximity to machine "readers" which can uniquely identify them at the ship, truck, container, pallet or unique item level. As it applies to the supply chain, RFID and electronic product codes (EPCs) are not just a replacement for the under-appreciated barcodes which revolutionized the manufacturing, retail and shipping businesses 29 years ago. They are a giant step forward in supply-chain visibility which one day should track goods from raw material to landfill, and simultaneously address issues like counterfeiting, theft, and perishability.

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Before you call in the hyperbole police to arrest us for overstatement, understand that it's the availability and sheer variety of applications that get people thinking in Star Trek terms. Consider the supply chain parallels in this real example of technology in use today: In large marathon races like those run in New York or Boston, officials need to account for not only the winner, but for each of thousands of runners jostling in the streets. At the start of the race, contestants affix a small transponder to their bodies. Machine readers mark the correct time they cross the starting line, chart relative progress at many intervals, reveal where they slowed, sped, or dropped out. Spectators watch the ebb and flow on a leader board, and a permanent record secures the outcome. That's basically it. RFID may revolutionize the supply chain, but it's hardly a new concept. "Friend or foe" beacons identified military aircraft as far back as the Second World War. Newer uses arose about 17 years ago in livestock and vehicle identification tracking. Lately, salmon roe are tracked in rivers with RFID, and there is talk of RFID tags in every euro bill. Though ubiquitous RFID is no a slam-dunk business certainty, the technology works today in applications where computers are able to recognize things around themselves automatically. Efficiency, Security, Authenticity Kevin Ashton is executive director of the Auto-ID Center, a research arm of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Charged with building consensus and standards for uses of RFID, Ashton's group might consider how the postal service could improve delivery, or how the Department of Defense might fight a war more efficiently. The business side of RFID, he says, is the real prize. "The question is, 'How do we use this to sell more stuff and be more profitable?'"

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In Ashton's mind, a warehouse is just an excuse for not knowing what you need. The center is also working with a bandwagon of businesses (initially in retail and pharmaceutical), that are testing and applying RFID for top and bottom-line benefits. "We got involved in RFID and EPC trying to solve two problems and take advantage of one opportunity," says Larry Kellum, director of B2B supply chain innovation at Procter & Gamble. The problems are theft and counterfeiting, supply chain failures that are respective $50 and $500 billion problems for global retailers. The opportunity, he says, is the potential to identify products right down to the unique unit level and follow them through the supply chain. Theft is addressed today with at least four technologies, acoustic-magnetic, (the little white rectangles on high-value goods); foil radio frequency tags; electromagnetic; and microwave tags. While these systems were initially bought and applied by retailers, the cost became such that manufacturers soon took over some of the work, applying security devices inside costlier packaged goods, perhaps working with four piles of inventory. As for counterfeiting, which many consider an Asian problem, Kellum says P&G has found counterfeit bottles of Head&Shoulders shampoo near its Cincinnati headquarters. "There are three occasions this year where the FDA has pulled pharmaceutical drugs off shelves when there was no way to tell the real from the fake," Kellum says. In such cases, whole stocks were destroyed. In the wake of terror attacks, the scrutiny will only increase. Meanwhile, product identification remains the work of the ubiquitous barcodes, UPC in the United States, and EAN in 96 other countries around the world. "Barcodes have had almost immeasurable impact," says Ashton, "but they're probably the only piece of information technology from the 1960s that we still use unchanged." And, barcodes are not really automatic identification technology. Applied by manufacturers, they're usually read once, manually, at the checkout counter. "That's not the only time you want to know where a product is, or what it is," Ashton says. Point-of-sale information is of little use if an inventory system is waiting to sell 10 items that have been stolen off the shelf, and not many businesses can afford more than annual inventories. RFID won't stop street-corner fencing of goods, but it could prevent a retailer from buying gray-market perfume. Tag, You're It! RFID/EPC technology takes the security idea a step farther. So-called "smart tags" are unpowered microcomputer chips activated when placed in the transmitting field of a fixed or moving reader. "In its lowest cost implementation, it has just enough information to say its name or shut up," says Ashton. Though it transmits nothing more than a unique number, when connected to a network like the Internet, its value multiplies. There's plenty of theorizing about the value of "smart shelves" that can itemize inventory in real time, self-checkout, managing expiration dates and item location in stores. "In 35 percent of cases, people walk out of apparel stores without product when the product was there, but the customer or sales rep couldn't find it," notes Pete Abell, director of retail research at AMR. RFID, he says, has many niche applications in higher-priced perishables and shelf goods with expiration dates as well. "It's a value equation," Abell says. "No one wants fines or consumer lawsuits." The value equation is the central issue around RFID deployment, a mix of product ubiquity, value, and the cost of the tag. A 40-cent tag makes sense for a leather jacket, but not for a can of soup. So, many retailers and middlemen are experimenting with RFID at the pallet, and perhaps the case level. CHEP, a large, London-based company that pools pallets and containers, launched a pilot last year to install 250,000 EPC-compliant chips on its products. A company like Wal-Mart, big as it is, has only three pallet suppliers. Pushing the scale to 500,000 pallets brings the cost down; Abell believes Wal-Mart is hoping the technology, even at that level, might lower supply chain costs 3 to 5 percent. P&G is already in a pallet-level field test with a Sam's store in Tulsa; next February it begins case-level testing with Sams and Wal-Mart on products shipped from P&G's Missouri plant. If



they choose, testing could include active, self-powered tags connected to GPS units, and even temperature sensing tags. Reconciling damage in transit and invoice disputes are still more potential benefits of RFID. In early 2003, P&G also plans tests at the item level, and will even include some smart shelves that track the identity of unique bottles or cans, not just grades and classes. But making RFID practical on the item level is still a ways out, a chicken and egg problem that will determine if quantities ever drive chip cost to a nickel or less. "If we tag all the pallets and cases we should in a year, that would take about 2.5 billion tags," says Kellum. "At the item level, it's more like 22 billion. Until you build five billion chips, you can't get to a nickel." All Tags Equal The P&G case is just one of scores or hundreds of simple and deep trials underway in the U.S., and to an even greater extent in Europe. Many of these projects are under wraps at companies that feel they're protecting a competitive advantage. The industry and solutions are fragmented to the point where Kellum has identified 123 protocols for RFID. "Just about all of them work, and they're all incompatible," he says. On October 1, 1999, (the 25th anniversary of the UCC code), the Auto-ID Center came into official existence in MIT's engineering department. Having developed the barcode in the first place, MIT was a logical setting to extend the discussion. Funded by UCC, Gillette and P&G, the center today has 50 sponsors on three continents, a who's who of CPG, technology, shipping, and retail interests, not to mention the U.S. Department of Defense and Postal Service. A work in progress, the Auto-ID Center sponsors have met, developed and demonstrated technology, and worked for a common set of standards for RFID. But there were bound to be squabbles, such as those over extant UPC and EAN standards. To their credit, the group has opened Auto-ID centers in Cambridge, England, and Adelaide, Australia; next month, new centers will be announced in Tokyo and Shanghai; another is planned in South America. The actual code structure may not be the greatest issue. "Revenue is the dirty little secret," Abell says. Both EAN and UPC are paid for issuing code to suppliers in their countries. While UCC governs 26 industries in North America, EAN is fragmented across 96 nations. "They all have little bureaucracies to feed," Abell says. As a result, the Auto-ID Center has made sure it can set aside enough unique digits so all the parties can continue to issue code. Also, technology is ahead of the game. "Relative to standards, we always say, 'Look at whether RFID can improve your automation today and go from there,'" says Susy d'Hont, marketing manager at RFID system manufacturer Matrics, one of some 30 tech partners welcomed but treated neutrally at the Auto-ID Center. With technology a proprietary advantage, best-practice leaders won't wait for consensus. The process is incremental, though d'Hont says without standards, the market might never scale to the billions. There are technical issues as well. Different countries allow different frequencies and power levels for RFID devices. For Matrics, 10 feet is the minimum standard for RFID measurement; other system vendors see it differently. The very properties of the materials being scanned, plastics, liquids, metals, can also affect the properties of the devices. Finally, you might also worry that ubiquitous use of RFID would make the tags themselves subject to counterfeit. With proper infrastructure in place that would be hard to do, Ashton says, the equivalent of typing a Web address into a browser for a page that doesn't exist. A Meeting of Minds The proof will be in the pudding. Mark your calendars for October, 2003, the date set for a symposium in Chicago. There, Version 1 of EPC automatic identification will be rolled out, with open specifications for tags talking to readers, readers talking to computers, standards for capturing and managing the data and so on. Hopefully, a lot of vendors will be present as well. "People will be fighting to sell you compliant tags just like they fight to sell you PCs today," says Ashton.



It's not an all-at-once proposition, but Ashton hopes some of the rest of the world will be ready to at least dip their toes in the technology. The more people who use the technology, the more valuable it becomes, and the cheaper it gets. "We'll have six months to a year," Ashton says. If confidence and momentum remain high, things could happen quickly from the end of 2004. "By 2010 it could be a whole different world or nothing could happen," he says, with a scientist's aplomb. He's also hoping for results beyond pure capitalistic efficiency. The Auto-ID center is working with consumer and watchdog groups and promises easy, secure opt-out for consumers who fear obtrusive marketing and data gathering. In the end, he feels you're identifying a product, not a person, and for those who participate, the technology will be no more intrusive than a grocery loyalty card. For futurists who see the days of "smart appliances," refrigerators or microwave ovens that can interrogate their contents, the technology may be helpful, but that's way down the road. We have moved past the starting line though. Recycling, Ashton says, could be the greatest application of all. Imagine if, in 20 years, everything had a chip in it. The landfill operator could establish what he has and what to do with it. "So many things go into holes in the ground because we can't sort them out." Will we ever reach the day when every product made carries a unique number? Are there even enough numbers to go around? Leave it to MIT to at least get that issue out of the way. EPC Version 1 contains 96 bits (ones and zeroes). "Fifty-six bits is enough to number every grain of rice consumed on the planet this year," Ashton says. "One hundred twenty-eight bits can number every molecule on the surface of the Earth." In this regard at least, future-speak or not, Y3K is already taken care of. (Jim Ericson is editorial director and senior news editor at Line56 Media)

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