To RFID or not RFID

When it comes to the topic of radiofrequency identification, a spectrum of opinion arises

Dr. Sabri Hamed Al Azazi, Chief Information Officer, Dubai Holding
“From a logistics and supply chain perspective, you cannot find a better technology to help you. In a warehouse, just by scanning the air with an RFID reader, you can always find the item that you are looking for amongst thousands of other items. Your partners, if they have a common system, will also know the status of the good – when it arrives in the warehouse, how long it takes to process. I haven’t seen any technology that can support you like RFID. RFID is also becoming cheaper. The price of passive tags has dropped to 40 cents each and active tags now cost around US$1. The hardware for RFID is very inexpensive. The integration, software and implementation, however, might cost you. If you’re a company with a large number of legacy systems and you need to link all these business support systems to the RFID system, that part is the expensive part. If you want to do a lot of customisation, that’s also expensive. But a normal, vanilla installation
is not costly at all. Cost is not an obstacle. The greatest challenge that RFID faces is whether or not people will accept it.”

Richard Bell, General Manager, RHS Group Logistics
“For us, RFID is great. It saves a lot of manifest reporting. How can you not believe
in it? From a logistics provider’s perspective, it provides a huge benefit. It is hugely time-saving, incredibly accurate and almost foolproof. I suppose as RFID becomes less expensive we will all be using it. We will certainly embrace it.”

Julian Sperring-Toy, Business Director, SICK Automation
“I’ve been in the logistics technology business for about 16 years now. When I joined, RFID was the ‘next biggest thing’. But I’m still waiting for it to be the next biggest thing. Every single large scale RFID trial or implementation has failed. If you look at Walmart in the United States, RFID didn’t work at the level they were expecting it to; and the same thing happened with Gilette. The United States Department of Defence – that experience worked – but they were using it on much more high value pieces of equipment. If you’re using RFID to track a very high value piece of equipment, then the cost of integration is worth it. If it’s a piece of luggage where the information is critical, then RFID is absolutely worth the integration cost. If you’re going down to case level or pallet level – say a case of razor blades – it’s absolutely not worth it. Until the price of RFID chips come down massively to equal the price of a barcode, I can’t see it ever happening.”

Ramon Thoms, Regional Manager, Erhardt + Partner Solutions
“RFID is on everybody’s tongue, but no one really knows what is really behind this technology. There is no international standard. Right now, if you invest in RFID, it is only an island solution. RFID tags that you can use in the UAE might not be readable in Europe, Asia, Australia or the United States. It’s very specific, it’s very limited in its ranges. We at Erhardt + Partner Solutions are an innovation leader in Europe. We are always on top of the latest information thanks to our link to universities and researchers. But, to be honest, we only have a few customers that do use RFID right now to support only parts of their processes, for example an insurance company identifying its contracts. This is an island solution and the customer knows it is an island solution. It is an internal solution for the customer. He is not able to share this information with others.”