RFID Techonology Adoption 0 comments

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RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, is one of the most-talked about technologies in the US nowadays. In fact, I remember that it was actually included as one of the top 100 inventions over the past century in some magazine poll recently. It has not yet caught on in Asia but I believe it might soon, as consumer trends tend to fan out from the West; the widespread adoption of RFID technology is, incidentally, driven by the consumer goods industry in the US.

At its core, RFID technology simply refers to simple tags which can be attached or incorporated into any object, with the ability to be read by RFID receivers via radio waves; they can provide product identification and facilitate logistical tracking. They are an improvement on the ubiquitous bar codes as moving objects can be tracked easily, while still being relatively cheap compared to contactless Smart cards which have better security features and are used to store more personalised information.

The adoption of RFID technology has been driven by Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, who announced in 2003 that it expected that its top 100 suppliers would be RFID-compliant by the end of 2004. Indeed, now they are 100% RFID compliant, which means their suppliers, all top brand names, have adopted the technology (albeit mainly in the US). It is not surprising why Walmart wanted to adopt RFID. On the supply side it would allow them to press their longstanding strengths in inventory management and enhance supply chain efficiency by allowing tracking of every item in every shipment and instant access to important groups of product data: expiry date, country of manufacture, OEM etc. On the customer side, it allows faster checkout at the aisles and better security against shoplifting.

Indeed, the technology has been used in many industries. It has been embedded in tires to allow tracking, in airports to track luggage, in bookstores to track books, and can even be implanted in pets or prison inmates to track their locations. Singapore, as always, is quick to adopt new technologies; the new NLB library book returning/borrowing systems makes use of RFID technology facilitated by RFID tags on all library books. And I wouldn't be surprised if RFID-enabled chips are used in the new casinos that are coming up 3-4 years later; that seems like a natural application for RFID.

References:
(1) RFID's growing presence in the marketplace
(2) Radio Frequency Identification news and commentary
(3) Wikipedia: RFID