Schuster / Allen / Brock Global RFID

The Value of the EPCglobal Network for Supply Chain Management
1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-3-540-35655-4
Verlag: Springer
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 322 Seiten, eBook

At the same time, I was a junior Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble w- ried about a much more mundane problem: how to keep my products on the shelf. Embedding RFID tags in the products, and RFID readers in the shelf, seemed like the perfect – indeed the only – way to do this. But I needed RFID to be cheaper, better, and standardized in an open system. In early 1999, by sheer chance, I met Brock and Sarma. The result was a potent meeting of minds. I was looking to fund research, and Brock, Sarma and Siu were looking for research funding. Working with Alan Haberman of the Uniform Code Council, one of the founding fathers of the UPC bar code, and Allan Boath of the Gillette C- pany, we developed a plan for a new industry funded research consortium at MIT. Haberman wanted to call it the Center For Automatic Identification And Data Capture. At the last minute I persuaded him to abbreviate it to the Auto-ID Center. But my luck with names is hit and miss: inspired by the bar code, I had the bad idea of calling Auto-ID Center’s technology UPC2. Brock and Sarma saved the day – one of them, I cannot remember which, proposed a far better alternative: EPC, for electronic product code. The Auto-ID Center opened on October 1, 1999. P&G loaned me to MIT to act as Executive Director, and Sunny Siu was the first Research Director.

Zielgruppe

Professional/practitioner

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schuster, Edmund W.

Allen, Stuart J.

Brock, David L.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

The Emergence of a New Key Technology.- Hardware: RFID Tags and Readers.- Infrastructure: EPCglobal Network.- Data: What, When, and Where?.- Leveraging the Supply Chain: Case Studies.- Warehousing: Improving Customer Service.- Maintenance: Service Parts Inventory Management.- Pharmaceuticals: Preventing Counterfeits.- Medical Devices: Smart Healthcare Infrastructure.- Agriculture: Animal Tracking.- Food: Dynamic Expiration Dates.- Retailing: Theft Prevention.- Defense: Improving Security and Efficiency.- Creating Business Value.- The Role of Data in Enterprise Resource Planning.- Building a Business Case for the EPCglobal Network.- Enhancing Revenue Using the EPC.- Outlook: Navigating the Sea of Data.

Leseproben

CHAPTER 3 Infrastructure: EPC global Network (p. 29-30)

Though tags and readers are important in achieving RFID on a large scale, there are other critical system elements needed for successful implementation in practice. The fundamental assumption of the EPCglobal Network is that low cost tags applied to objects will hold just enough data for identification using a serial number (the EPC). Additional information about a tagged object resides not on the object itself, but on a computer network. With this architecture, the serial number is the key for accessing information about the object.

For RFID Technology to become viable in practice, an infrastructure must exist for processing and communicating EPC data.1 In meeting the goal of creating a common infrastructure, MIT announced Auto-ID Release 1.0 in October 2003. At the same time, MIT entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with GS1.

In turn, GS1 established a new division called EPCglobal to implement Release 1.0 and to conduct further development based on industry input. This put forth an initial set of standards that formed the basis of an infrastructure for EPC data. Later, Auto-ID Release 1.0 became the starting-point for the EPCglobal Network.

Representing a mature set of standards,2 the original infrastructure design for linking physical objects to the Internet closely resembled that of the Internet itself. Distributed processing and open standards were the defining characteristics that combined to make the EPC and RFID technology operable across business and international boundaries. In the future, knowledge of this type of infrastructure will be as common as that of microcomputers, networks, and the Internet. All in business will need to understand at least the conceptual aspects of how the technology works in practice.

The EPCglobal Network and RFID technology have potential to combine the strengths of wireless broadcast networks such as television and radio, with the power of instant two-way communication.3 This accomplishes a task of great value to commerce through the merging of information with physical objects. In essence, the EPCglobal Network creates an object-centric system based on unique identification. This type of infrastructure serves as a base for creating new forms of automation and ubiquitous computing needed for "smart objects" that will populate the supply chains of the future.

The next section explores the essential aspects of Release 1.0. This serves as an important base for understanding the current development of the EPCglobal Network.

An Overview of Release 1.0

In conjunction with advances by tag and equipment manufacturers, the objective of Release 1.0 was to establish infrastructure and set open standards for wide-scale adoption of passive RFID technology across many different industries, thus creating a web of things.4 Encompassing a comprehensive information technology infrastructure along with open standards for data transmition, Release 1.0 marked a change in approach as compared to traditional RFID systems that depended upon proprietary standards. Though effective in specific applications, traditional RFID technology stopped short of completely fulfilling the need for open communication within business, government, and medical organizations.

As is the case with most information technology, the lack of open standards for RFID tended to inhibit widespread adoption within supply chains for consumer goods and other manufactured products because organizations were wary of implementing a system that might cause internal and external compatibility challenges. Interoperability between tags and readers situated at various stages of the supply chain was a major concern. This fact, combined with significant tag and reader costs that were dependent on volume of production, has limited widespread adoption of RFID in spite of advances in sophistication.