I've noticed that the latest printed material from EPCglobal spells the name with a small "g." I will do the same. Today was dense, so there's plenty to report. I've just summarised my notes here with no real attempt at commentary (and limited proofreading).
My interest picked up especially in the "Industry Perspectives and Commitments" session. When the discussion turned to what it will take to make RFID adoption more widespread, David B. Meany, Cisco, talked about the "Tornado of Obsolescence" which surrounds this technology until standards mature. He pointed to the EPCglobal UHF Gen 2 as an important milestone in the former and current development projects for middleware as eventually resolving this. Also on the topic of standards the question of competing standards from ISO and China, with David Kirkpatrick, senior editor FORTUNE magazine, making the observation that "Global companies are more influential than governments." To which Kenneth D. Porad, Boeing, replied, "Standards are built by concensus and imposed by trading partners." Alan Estevez, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, added that he thought Wal*Mart will drive suppliers in China to compliance with EPC, and these suppliers will in turn pressure the Chinese government to support the same standards. The next topic was the increase in data volume driven by so much new acquisition of tracking, tracing and pedigree information for so many items. Meany pointed to the value of filtering software but noted the lack of middleware with smart, predictive algorithms for managing data flow and supporting decisions in the field. Estevez announced that the data volume issues were "overblown." Paul Rudolph, FDA, countered this by describing some of the new regulatory data retention requirements around drug and food product pedigrees and anti-counterfeiting measures for pharmaceuticals. Lastly, the discussion turned to privacy and security issues where John Raudabaugh, VP Albertsons, observed that people already give up privacy for RFID where it benefits them, as in the case of toll tags, and cell phones. He acknowledged concerns around privacy, especially among drug consumers but pointed to improved safety as a result customers value. Estevez announced that the public fears concerning privacy and security were "overblown" and that in his area (Defense Logistics) privacy wasn't a concern.
In the next session "EPCglobal Network: Demonstrating the Future," Simon Langford of Wal*Mart and Jack Grasso of EPCglobal acted out a multimedia skit with the help of others telling the story of a misplaced carton of Gillette Venus razors, as Dick Catwell of Gillette, and Linda Dillman (videotaped) added details along with supporting commentary on video tape from IBM, Sun, Tibco and Verisign. Steve David of Proctor and Gamble then walked through an impressive live demo of a new product launch where stocking levels were not optimal on the sales floor and software allowed the supplier to spot the problem and gently remind the retailer of gaps in stock levels via email.
"The Analysts Roundtable: The Play and the Players" brought together Phillip Alling of Bear, Sterns & Co. Inc., Sarah Friar of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Reik Read of Robert W. Baird Co. with Andrew Ratner of The Baltimore Sun as the moderator. Each of the analysts gave their overview of the current position of RFID and then answered questions. The overviews agreed that the technology was warming up among private investors, though there was little public investment opportunity yet. They predicted continued slow adoption and minimal expenditure until standards mature. Friar mentioned that mentioning that RFID was "the easiest way to get on a CIO's agenda." Friar also said that RFID would have to live within the technology spending cycle, which is still subdued. Read warned that suppliers would likely meet mandated requirements but would do so with minimal expenditure, with "slap and ship" solutions. Alling pointed to encouragingly rapid innovation in Antenna designs and software which could overcome some of the existing technology hurdles such as tagging metals a containers of liquid. Friar warned that companies will have to overcome "slap and ship compliance" and find their own ROI. Fiar also said that drivers in the near term would be compliance but in the long term, ROI, security and safety would be powerful drivers.
The "Pilot Findings Unveiled: The Validation & The Happy Accidents" presentation provided a tour through pilot results for Traxus, Campbell Soup Company and IP Smart Packaging (a division of International Paper). Louis Sirico of Traxus reminded suppliers that their distribution center was different from the retailer's store, but the tags selected for supply chain management had to work in both places. Equipment, environment and especially processes differ enough to require careful testing in both locations. Especially important is that the retailer use the same or compatible antennas and readers. Issues such as antenna polarity can go unnoticed unless they are addressed specifically in testing. He also emphasized, as did all of the other presenters in this session, the importance of carefully targetted pilots with clear goals.
Mark Engle of Cambell Soup Company described their pilot for a product which he characterized as the worst possible RFID candidate, "a low margin, high value, liquid in a metal container." They wanted to know if such a product could work at all, they also wanted to test end-to-end with as little impact to the production systems as possible. In order to address consumer privacy concerns, the pilot cases selected were not cases which would be taken home by the consumer. Their results indicated that there was no current positive ROI for RFID in their case, but they saw great improvements in the technology over the time of the pilot and will be implementing RFID for compliance.
Jack DeAlmo of CVS talked about their pilot as part of Jumpstart, a cooperative set of pilots and information sharing among healthcare companies. Their goal was not to prove the technology but to validate process surrounding RFID for individual items. Again privacy was a serious concern so tagging was done on packages which would not be used by end consumers with the exception of one SKU which might possibly go home with a pharmacy customer. This bottle was tagged with a very visible tag which the customer could easily remove manually. The tag was deactivated at purchase as well. The pilot proved that individual item tracking was possible, that pedigree tracing and tracking requirements could be met, but again a positive ROI was not indicated by the pilot. Some potential benefit in improved efficiencies, especially in recalls and expiration management would not have appeared in the pilot and might lead to substantial ROI over time. The pilot used HF rather than UHF since UHF read ranges are too large for individual item tracking and HF is less suceptible to packaging issues.
Michael H. Anderson of IP Smart Packaging described three pilots, the first tracked paper rolls in conditions where barcodes had previously proven unacceptable. The second pallet proved out a system for intelligent order fullfillment using a reader on a smart pallet jack. The third pilot tested tagging on a Folder and Gluer machine in a very rugged environment. In each case problems arose and mistakes were made. Anderson encouraged attendees to see mistakes in pilots as inevitable and valuable as sources of information and improvement. He described work with vendors for tag printers/encoders and readers which led to improved products more suited to their needs. He pointed out an intersting scenario with cartons on mixed pallets where because of label printing requirements scanning with a barcode was actually faster and preferable to RFID. Only an actual pilot could have turned up such a non-intuitive discovery.
For my second session of the day I skipped out of "Track Two - Pilot to Implementation" and attended a "Track Three - Implementation & Beyond" session. This session was "The Global Perspective." EPCglobal representatives from Canada, Brasil, Singapore and the UK described pilots and educational initiatives in their countries and region with some interesting highlights. Each ECPglobal national organization tries to avoid duplicating research efforts already undertaken by other EPCglobal organizations, so Art Smith of ECCC explained that in Canada the focus of pilots have been on produce and fresh foods tracking with an emphasis on traceability and tracking for pedigree compliance.
In Brasil, Mexico and Columbia which represent 85% of the GDP of Latin America, Sergio Ribinik, the CEO of EAN Brasil, explained how the EPC organization is working to drive adoption and to educate and support early adoptors with training classes, conferences and a support call center which accepts almost 20,000 phone calls per month. Recently, the largest supermarket chain in Brasil announced a plan to require RFID from it's 8,000 suppliers.
For the UK, John Clarke of Tesco Stores Ltd. has focused pilots around secure supply chains and supplier case level tagging. Tesco's approach in contrast to Wal*Mart has been an offer to find common value with suppliers rather than a mandate for RFID. Clarke believes that solving the issues around European adoption of EPC could potential solve all of the same issues in adoption which will arise globally. Interestingly, Tesco does not use the term "RFID." The prefered term is "radio barcode."
Tan Jin Soon of SANC/ECR Singapore described RFID animal tracking using EPC in the valuable and nearly extinct Arowan fish, and reminded the audiance that Singapore was the first nation to have an RFID based traffic volume management system and to completely EPC enable the public library system. If the current project to add EPCglobal network support on top of this existing system is live by 2005 it will be the first production EPCglobal network in the world.
There's more detail, but it's late and I'm tired. :)
more later.