Is RFID making waves in NZ & RFID Buyers Guide
New Zealand businesses have been slow to deploy radio frequency identification (RFID) technology as a supply chain tracking tool, but there are strong signals that might be about to change...
|
Frequent flyers can look forward to taking part in an intriguing RFID initiative in 2008 which could pave the way for further innovations in airline baggage management logistics. Air New Zealand will be offering its regular customers the opportunity to avoid the baggage-drop counter. Instead they will attach an RFID tag to their bag and fling it directly onto the conveyer belt. Sensor technology will match the bag to its owner’s destination, sending it (in theory) into the cargo hold of the right plane. It will be interesting to see how enthusiastically customers embrace the initiative. Many will no doubt hesitate before chucking their precious luggage onto the belt for the first time. There’s nothing like a paper label with destination printed on it to give you at least some level of security that you’ll see your bag at the other end of the flight. That unease over the concept of a paperless check-in system offers a good example of wider business reluctance around RFID. Radio frequency identification technology has been around for a long time but despite its potential to provide productivity and accuracy boosts across a raft of industries – manufacturing, transport and logistics amongst them – businesses have been slow to adopt it. There are many reasons for the slow uptake including cost of investing in the technology and the price of RFID tags, uncertainty over the return on investment and a wait-and-see approach to the promulgation of international standards around RFID communications. But there are signs that RFID’s time may be near. On page 10 we detail findings of a survey which found 30 percent of responding New Zealand businesses are either using, adopting, testing or planning an RFID deployment. A further 36 percent said they plan to adopt the technology within the next three years. Gary Hartley, general manager sector development at standards organisation GS1 New Zealand says there is a lot more business interest in, and testing of, RFID going on around the country than people would assume. Businesses that are doing R&D involving RFID tend to keep it quiet because they don’t want to give away intellectual property secrets to competitors. “Keeping it close to their chest is understandable but a little bit frustrating of course because it would be nice to share the learnings, frankly, and enable supply chains to become more efficient, and obviously make companies become more profitable,” says Hartley. One sector which is a little more open than most about its RFID deployments is the meat processing industry. “We had a couple of particular business objectives we wanted to solve and we saw RFID as helping to solve those,” says Mark Rance, IT manager at ANZCO Foods, which deployed an RFID product tracking solution at its CMP Rangitikei meat processing plant in 2005. The plant uses a network of about 65 RFID readers. Tags are attached to carcass skids and when the carcasses are broken, tags are fitted to the plastic trays holding the various meat products. Rance says with labour being one of the issues the industry faces, there is a need to automate as much of the processing process as possible, and RFID has helped enable that automation. RFID has also enabled the plant to reduce the amount of human contact with products, an important consideration for a food processing facility. “It’s also enabled us to track the movement of product into particular work stations and has then been able to give us greater visibility as to what goes on within each room,” Rance says. “We’ve always been able to track product into a room and out of a room, but what goes on within that room is equally important.” He says RFID has by-and-large delivered the return on investment the company was expecting. “It has pretty much lived up to what we thought it would do – in some cases more, in some case we’re not quite there yet – it’s an evolution.” At present the RFID tracking process stops when product leaves the CMP Rangitikei site, although Rance says one of the next phases of the technology will be allowing tracking of cartons into customers’ supply chains. “Some customers are currently requesting RFID traceability with other products they sell, although not with meat at the moment. However, we see it coming so we’re trying to be ahead of the game.” RFID’s penetration into the supply chain overseas continues to grow. US retail giant Wal-Mart, for example, now has its top 700 suppliers providing pallet and carton level tagging. GS1’s Hartley says the price of tags – a cost often top-of-mind with would-be RFID users – has dropped considerably even in the past 12 months. Whereas they might cost 50USc a year ago, now when bought in decent volumes they might cost about 20USc each. “The promise of RFID is starting to be realised now,” he says. “Whereas before there was a lot of hype around RFID, that’s dissipated now and I think in large measure it’s because companies are knuckling down, rolling their sleeves up and actually seeing if they can drive some value out of this technology.” EPCglobal, an arm of GS1 aimed at driving electronic product code (EPC) standards supporting RFID is active in New Zealand and its roles include educating businesses about RFID. “Education will always be a requirement but I think there is a reasonable amount of opportunity in New Zealand for organisations to become aware of the opportunities for RFID,” says Hartley. Also helping to encourage local uptake of the technology is the New Zealand RFID Pathfinder Group, and incorporated society set up to coordinate and support organisations and individuals involved in RFID and EPC. Pathfinder chairman Alan Mayo says the organisation is currently working with two companies in the agriculture sector on RFID feasibility studies which have the potential to offer some valuable insights around local deployment of the technology. “That’s showing we’re making good progress and it could lead to something really demonstrable which would be a bit of a catalyst,” he says. Mayo says feasibility studies are a vital stage in RFID initiatives because businesses risk missing out on the full benefits of the technology if they jump too quickly into deployments. “There is definitely the interest [in RFID] and people can see the benefits but now they’re facing the struggle to make it work in their own environment,” Mayo says. “It’s going to take a little bit of time for people to be able to mobilise and make use of the opportunity. You need to put resources into RFID – it’s an investment decision that some people aren’t prepared to commit to at the moment until they see demonstrated benefits either in their own industry or other industries.” |
|
|
RFID BUYERS GUIDE | ||||
|
Provider |
ECPglobal New Zealand |
Sybase |
Tracient Technologies Ltd |
Sato |
|
Capabilities/Key Partners |
EPCglobal is the global, not-for-profit standards development organisation driving the adoption of RFID technologies through the use of the electronic product code (EPC). With a standards development community of over 4000 participants worldwide, EPC technologies offer organisations globally standardised RFID solutions to enable RFID interoperability between multiple levels of supply chain partners as well as 4-walls type applications. |
Sybase iAnywhere provides developers and system integrators with the infrastructure and resources they need to provide cost-effective solutions that leverage and integrate RFID, sensor and location-tracking data. Our comprehensive RFID architecture enables companies to extend, expand and mobilize information from RFID and sensor devices throughout the enterprise as determined by existing technology investments, immediate priorities and future objectives. It offers development and runtime environments, management capabilities and a distributed architecture that implement business logic and data filtering. These powerful features simplify the software development process and ensure that only the most valuable and useful information flows to the enterprise. |
Tracient designs and produces a range of RFID readers in small, ergonomic form factors for mobile workers and field force automation. Tracient readers feature “plug and play” Bluetooth and USB interfaces. The products readily integrate to a wide range of computing devices from desktop platforms to handheld computers and cellphones. Tracients wireless products fill immediate needs for affordable, lightweight data capture tools in retail, manufacturing and logistics operations. Simple to use, Simple to integrate... Simple Identification from Tracient. |
A global leader in RFID and traceability, SATO is one of the first in the industry to introduce a complete, multi-protocol EPC-compliant, UHF RFID solution. SATO’s FlagTagSolutions are perfect for situations subject to interference from metals, liquids, products and packaging and can be used on pallets, cases metal drums, liquids or aluminum cans. |
|
Key Reference Sites |
||||
|
Contact Details |
Gary Hartley |
Wayne Kedzlie |
Neil Edmond |
Sato |
7/11/26_ex_m_nl_h
