Posted by Bret Kinsella on Wed, Jul 28, 2010
In keeping with this week’s Wal-Mart theme (Wal-Mart RFID Announcement), I thought I would comment on a good post by Mark Roberti of RFID Journal (Why Isn’t Wal-Mart Killing the Tags) that goes beyond Wal-Mart and speaks to general RFID economics. He outlines a sound explanation why Wal-Mart’s in-store item-level RFID tracking for apparel isn’t killing RFID tags. It’s all about RFID economics.
Issuing a kill command to a tag makes it inoperable. The capability is standards based and is widely available as a way to proactively address consumer privacy concerns. Eventually Wal-Mart may decide to enable this feature when it achieves scale in its in-store tagging. Roberti’s commentary suggests the economics would not justify the investment today.
Calculating RFID Cost
In order for Wal-Mart to kill every tag, it would need to do this at the time of purchase. This means in the check-out lane. Consider 4,000+ Wal-Mart stores and an average of 25 (Mark estimates 40), that is over 100,000 lanes. Placing an RFID reader at each lane at a cost of $800 (Mark estimates $3,000) gives you a hardware cost of $80 million before installation, testing, maintenance and repair costs are included. Mark’s calculations come to $480 million. Either way, it is a large number.
Without the check-out lane readers, there will be no killing the tags at check-out – for now anyway. The current trajectory suggests Wal-Mart is only a couple of years away from just this type of investment. As a greater percentage of its floor stock is tagged, there would be more usefulness of leveraging RFID to streamline check-out. You can imagine how this event will usher in another economic phenomenon – a change in total retail operational costs.
Why Wal-Mart’s RFID Adoption Helps You – It's RFID Economics
If you aren’t in retail or an RFID supplier it may not be obvious how this Wal-Mart hullabaloo helps you. It’s simple RFID economics. When Wal-Mart began its initiative several years ago a lot of investment poured into the RFID industry. That investment in turn yielded better performing tags and readers at lower price points. RFID software has also changed dramatically from RFID 1.0. This in turn helped open up a lot of new RFID application categories and more favorable business cases for a wide range of industries.
RFID in healthcare, aerospace, financial services, government, energy, hospitality and others benefit from this every day. As Wal-Mart ramps up its adoption and purchases 5,000 handheld readers, the unit cost of those readers comes down and the savings can be passed along to other customers. As Wal-Mart suppliers purchase another 40-100 million RFID tags to meet the Wal-Mart requirement, increased RFID tag volumes allow for lower total costs for everyone. When Wal-Mart moves, it drives large volume on its own. Large volume drives down costs. Those cost reductions benefit every RFID end user.
Contribute your thoughts on Wal-Mart and RFID economics by adding a comment below.
Posted by Bret Kinsella on Mon, Jul 26, 2010
It’s a hot summer for RFID adoption news. The biggest so far is Wal-Mart's now formal announcement of a program it initiated months ago for item level retail tracking. Others may have missed a much quieter announcement in Canada mandating that all cattle be tagged. Based on our unique industry position, ODIN gets to see many other item level initiatives moving forward in IT asset tracking, aerospace tool tracking, the healthcare supply chain and even hospitality and entertainment. While there may be many very good reasons to track at the pallet and case level, the momentum is at the item level. The reason: value.
RFID is faster, better and often cheaper
This is not surprising. There are several areas where barcode and other techniques don’t provide any capabilities at all. In many of these situations introducing RFID tags reduces total costs for labor and inventory while increasing accuracy. RFID is ideally suited for situations when you need to:
- Identify many items at once
- Identify items where line of site requirements are cumbersome
- Find items quickly
- Identify items even when no human is present (or that human doesn’t follow standard policies)
RFID Retail Adoption is Strengthening and Drives Revenue
Despite all of the rumors of Wal-Mart reducing its RFID commitment, the facts consistently point more to refinement and expansion than retrenchment. Wal-Mart expanded its Sam’s Club program last year and is moving aggressively to in-store apparel tracking applications that have proven to increase sales in other companies such as American Apparel and Marks & Spencer. Other retailers such as Bloomingdale’s have documented upwards of 27% inventory accuracy improvements with item level RFID. In retail, better accuracy means fewer stock outs and directly translates into higher revenue.
It is no surprise that an Aberdeen article published this month suggested that 57% of retailers in a recent survey are using or planning to deploy RFID at the item level. We are starting to see that tipping point in retail that people have long anticipated. If not for the severe recessionary impact on retail in 2008-2009 which dried up capital for new technology investment, we certainly would have seen this sooner. The recent activity has led Reik Read of Robert W. Baird to increase his apparel tagging estimates from a 40% to over 120% growth rate in 2010.
RFID is just as strong in Healthcare, Aerospace, Financial Services and Government
In other industries, ODIN is seeing a similar trend. Although not driving headlines like Wal-Mart, these companies that often try to stay out of the limelight have been rapidly moving to RFID. We have seen upticks in item level RFID initiatives particularly related to IT assets, tools, weapons and medical implants. In the orthopedic implant industry, you can safely say the tipping point is already past. End users are now skipping pilots altogether and moving right into production – a clear sign of a rapidly maturing industry.
People familiar with ODIN will know that we have been conservative in our RFID growth estimates over the years. We saw what was happening. We knew the level of end user commitment. We knew which press releases were pilot studies and which were actual production systems. We knew which tag and reader vendors were actually receiving big orders. In 2010, we have seen an unambiguous shift. RFID adoption is accelerating across numerous industries. Wal-Mart may be the best publicized example, but from our seat, they are just another example of a broader adoption trend.
Read about why Wal-Mart won't be killing tags soon and how RFID economics make a difference here.
Posted by Bret Kinsella on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
RFID Lesson from ODIN Labs
Learn about one of the biggest causes of poor RFID read accuracy and performance - Interference Rejection. From the coast of Ireland to the ODIN lab in Washington, DC ODIN shares the secrets of a winning RFID deployment.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Sat, Jul 10, 2010
This week’s blog is from ODIN’s Harold Goldzung:
One of ODIN’s core verticals is RFID in healthcare. There’s been a lot of talk about the space heating up – I don’t mean a lot of new clients (which there are!) I mean autoclave sterilization. We’ve done more than 300 successful RFID projects, and the reason is we create Supremely Satisfied Clients™ that means we leave no technology stone unturned, or tag unheated for that matter. Several of our healthcare clients are interested in using RFID before an autoclave process. With the help of the world’s greatest RFID engineers in the ODIN lab we’ve found some interesting options.
Over the past couple of months we have been working with some metal mount tags from RCD Technology. Those of you who know about ODIN’s benchmark series may find this fact wholly unremarkable. We regularly test the latest and greatest RFID technologies, including tags, for our independent benchmarks and our over 100 clients. However these tags are different. They have evolved to meet a specific niche, the healthcare industry. RCD has adapted tags from their Sentry M series tags to withstand harsh autoclave and chemical bath sterilization environments.
I have to tell you, the evolution is amazing. RCD has run these tags through hundreds of cycles of autoclave simulations at temperatures up to 300° F. With our guidance one of our healthcare clients has tested these RFID tags to stringent FDA standards for autoclave and chemical bath sterilization processes with no discernable performance degradation. This is remarkable considering how relatively new the concept of metal mount tags is, and then adding the autoclave requirement on top of it.
About two years ago, we designed an RFID asset tracking system for a US Army research laboratory and hospital. I wish we had these tags then. This facility has thousands of high dollar assets that require constant tracking. These assets are all subjected to intense sterilization procedures including autoclave and chemical baths. At that time, it was extremely difficult to locate any tag that would meet the challenges of that environment and continue to read. We couldn’t confidently recommend any tag that would meet their needs. Now two years later with the evolution exhibited by RCD and other metal mount tag manufacturers we could easily recommend a solution that would meet and exceed their needs. This is excellent news for anyone in research and the healthcare industry. Your high value microscopes and centrifuges can be tracked using the same RFID infrastructure as your laptops and mobile phones.
ODIN is due to issue another RFID tag benchmark in the near future. I believe it will include a section on autoclave ready RFID tags. Follow us and our founder Patrick Sweeney (PJSweeney) on Twitter for the latest updates. Stay tuned…
Posted by Bret Kinsella on Thu, Jul 01, 2010
RFID for Special Ops & S.W.A.T. Operators
Posted by Bret Kinsella on Thu, Jun 24, 2010
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: innovation broke down yet another long-held myth. Myths are powerful. They become common knowledge. Everyone clings to them. They shape the way we thing about the world and the decisions we make. I’m not talking about Theseus, Paris, Helen and a thousand ships here. I’m talking about RFID reading through metal.
Pat King from Technologies ROI (TROI) knows a thing or two about busting myths. A materials chemist by training, he has become one of the most innovative RF engineers around through decades of experience and an unwavering faith in bulls-eye empiricism. That faith doesn’t rely on myth; it focuses on needs, o
pportunities, experimentation and results. It leads to innovation.
RFID Innovation Busts another Myth
The Armored Tag line is TROI’s latest innovation: a passive RFID tag with the tag encapsulated under a metal dome. Aside from the trick that reader antennas facing the metal surface can capture the tag ID behind the metal, it has the practical benefit of being rugged. And, it is specifically designed to be mounted on other metal surfaces. The Armored Tag’s (I’m told the first of several variations) rugged exterior and metal surface makes it almost seem camouflaged when applied to metal assets.
Putting the Armored Tag to the Test
We didn’t have a formal benchmark scheduled, but ODIN labs still wanted test the tag to verify the claims. The short summary of the testing: it works. The read range isn’t as long as other TROI tags due to the attenuation and shadowing caused by all of that metal, but it is more than sufficient to work with a variety of common use cases. We have a good idea why it works based on our engineering experience with RFID pipe tagging. However, we’ll let you ask Pat for his official answer.
Metal Still Poses Challenges for RFID
Does this mean metal no longer impedes RFID performance? Not at all. Metal still has properties that reflect RF waves and can effectively prohibit tag reads in certain use cases (laptops in stored at the bottom of metal file cabinets comes to mind). However, it shows that some ingenuity and good engineering can produce useful new products and bust a myth in the process.
I recall the RFID World conference in Dallas in 2006 when Impinj demonstrated that passive RFID tags could be read while floating in bottle of water. In fact, many tags will work in the same scenario but Impinj was the first to see the marketing value of the demonstration. Despite the evidence, people still tell me that RFID can’t read around water. Others tell me that passive RFID can’t read on metal. It is true that read performance is typically less in both cases than in more benign RF settings, but both statements are false, persistent myths. I am sure I will be told several times this year that passive RFID can’t read tags through metal. I will be happy to set the record straight and use the new TROI Armored Tag as my evidence.
Posted by Luke Waidmann on Sat, May 22, 2010
In the past month a few new tags and a new tag vendor have entered the booming RFID 2.0 industry, and they are pushing the envelope on performance.
Xerafy, a Hong Kong company with sales offices in Dallas and Shanghai, entered the RFID Metal-Mount tag market with three RFID tags based on Alien Higgs3 chips. The tags have a small form factor and showed strong performance in ODIN's initial testing.
Omni-ID, a company that has been in the market for a several years now, recently released a new passive RFID tag designed to be used tracking assets that move across regulatory regions,
operating over the full UHF RFID frequency band of 860-960 MHz in multiple geographies. Omni-ID also updated their smallest tag, the Prox, to utilize the full frequency range.
TROI has made a name for themselves by creating highly durable encapsulated metal mount tags. They have just released the WoW-1 (Worldwide-Weldable) tag, a tag with a stainless steel case and ceramic filling that survives extremely harsh conditions and is able to be welded to metallic objects.
XERAFY RFID BEGINS
The three Xerafy passive RFID tags are from largest to smallest the Micro, Nano and Pico. Each tag has specific use cases in mind.
The Micro can be attached at the case level using included rivet holes. It has an ingress protection rating of IP68 - meaning it is useful for tracking items using RFID in harsh environments.
The Nano is small enough to be used on many tools but most importantly, is designed to be embedded in metal - meaning that the tag can still read when the back and all four sides are surrounded by metal with the face flush to the surface. This can be extraordinarily useful for tool vendors who may want to add RFID tracking systems as an option to their product lines.
The Pico is a minuscule tag - just 12 x 7 x 3 mm (0.47 x 0.28 x 0.12 in) without its case. Its diminutive size means that it has a fairly short read range, but enables the smallest of tools to be tracked. This tag can also be embedded into metal, just as the Nano.
With these three tags, Xerafy is targeting the Oil & Gas industry, Aerospace, Tool tracking and IT Assettracking use cases for passive RFID. The Micro can withstand harsh conditions on Oil Rigs and can be useful for tracking re-usable containers where available surface area can be a limiting factor. The Micro and Nano are both well suited to tracking tools and small IT Assets such as blade servers, laptops and phones.
OMNI-ID INNOVATES
Omni-ID recently released the MaxSQ (for square) - a medium sized metal mount tag that is capable of being read across all UHF RFID frequency bands. The MaxSQ is 51 x 42 x 12.2 mm (2 x 1.65 x 0.48 in) with an ingress protection rating of IP68. Its size means it can be applied to small containers and will be especially useful for international shipments.
The SQ joins three other Omni-ID passive tags - the Prox, MaxHD and Ultra - as the only metal mount tags that can be used throughout the globe. Globally tuned RFID tags have been the reality for paper labels for a few years now, but the added difficulty of creating a tag that is not de-tuned by metal prevented metal-mount tag manufacturers from following suit. This line of global metal-mount tags from Omni-ID will be very useful whenever items need to be tracked as they move around the globe. Use cases such as Aerospace MRO and Military Inventories can especially benefit. ODIN is using them now for a global data center roll out for one of the world's top banks, with great results.
TROI RFID INVENTS
Dr. Pat King, founder of Technologies ROI (TROI), has made a number of highly durable RFID tags by utilizing RFID chips in solder-able packages so the antenna can be soldered to the chip. This solves the weak point of many other tags, the chip-to-antenna attachment point. It is the part of a passive RFID tag most likely to fail.
The WoW-1 expands on the soldered chip-to-antenna attachment method to become the new standard in tag durability. Not only can it survive 1000 hours at 200C and brief exposure above 300C, it can also be welded or drilled and bolted to a surface. These characteristics mean it is extremely rugged and is a great option for demanding outdoor and Autoclave use-cases.
TROI is targeting the Oil & Gas and Heavy Machinery industries, but any project where there is a high risk that a tag could get knocked off of an item can use this tag.
Find out more about TROI’s new tag that reads through metalTREND WATCH FOR RFID TAGS
Now that markets where RFID technology is useful are more clearly defined, companies such as Xerafy and TROI making products designed for specific uses will become more common. Omni-ID's advances in global readability in a small form factor follow their advances in ultra long-range passive tags. More companies will surely pursue global frequency support as it opens new markets and simplifies the vendors' production lines.
During the summer, Confidex is planning to release its SteelBYTE RFID tag to European markets. This tag is one of the cheapest metal-mount tags available with 512 bits of user-memory. The SteelBYTE and its low-memory cousin, the SteelWave Micro, are popular in IT Asset and Tool Tracking use cases where their low price coupled with long read range provide even easier Returns on Investment.
This is a great time for the RFID industry - as economies bounce back from the recession and technology investment picks up, we are seeing more industries adopt RFID technology. This is perfect timing for new RFID tags from promising young companies and trusted vendors alike.
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Thu, May 06, 2010
I was talking with my friend John Sculley this morning, Apple's former CEO, about the RFID market and some interesting opportunities and it occurred to me that Apple is about to make a huge mistake. History may be repeating iteself.
For those of you who are Apple historians you'll remember that Sculley was hired by Steve Jobs to bring a marketing focus to the struggling company. Sculley was Pepsi's CEO and Jobs said "Do you want to sell sugar water the rest of your life or change the world?" Sculley took Apple to the next level growing the company from $800 million to over $8 billion in sales. He accomplished that growth through brilliant marketing (including the Superbowl Advertisement copying Orwell's 1984. Considered the best TV ad of all time). There were some losers in that reign however.
One of Apple's biggest failures was the Newton. A big mistake in the early PDA market, the Newton was finally killed in 1998. It was just before the emergence of the Treo, Blackberry and of course eventually the iPhone.
Apple is about to make a similarly colossal mistake and lose a huge market advantge with the iPhone. How? By adding near field communication (NFC) to the platform instead of UHF (ISO 18000-6). But, like Palm, there is another big winner waiting in the wings.
The reasons NFC is a mistake for the iPhone is it greatly limits the utility of the platform. NFC relies on high frequency (HF) RFID at 13.56 MHz. This gives an effective read range of 2-3" and requires a tag that currently cost about $.50 and is being used increasingly less and less because tags are both big and expensive. In short NFC for mobile phones is:
- More expensive
- Requires much larger tags
- Has a shorter read range
- Can be less secure
Ultra High Frequency (UHF) at 902-928 MHz would have significantly more usefulness for both businesses and personal use. Just look at what applications have already committed to UHF - Vail Resorts is doing a major roll-out, all the top medical device manufacturers like J&J, Medtronic, Smith & Nephew use UHF, IATA has determined UHF is the global choice for tracking luggage, IT Assets for major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America are all being deployed with UHF. Dell, IBM and HP are shipping servers and laptops with UHF RFID. American Apparel has their clothes tagged with...you guessed it...UHF RFID.
Imagine the iPhone user experience (with UHF) in these scenarios. You ride up the lift line with someone you enjoy and could scan their pass to get an email address. You are working in a data center and want to access configuration info on your company intranet so you scan the server's RFID tag. You wonder what the best sweater to go with a particular skirt is so you scan the UHF tag on the sweater. You're a nurse and you want to verify the patient's prescription so you scan his armband.There is a much bigger world with UHF beyond paying for concert tickets and Diet Pepsi.
UHF has:
- Greater read range than NFC (6-10 inches)
- Cheaper tags (under a dime, three cents on the horizon)
- Wider adoption already in place
- greater security with tamper proof tags, encryption, etc.
The usage will be significantly higher than NFC. Apple is going down a losing path..so who could benefit from their folly?
If you are in the RFID industry you know the biggest hardware player is also one of the largest makers of mobile phones - Motorola. (NYSE: MOT). MOT has RFID engineering skills across the hall from the phone group. What RFID does MOT make already today? You guessed it UHF (ISO 18000-6).
Imagine the Droid operating system with a UHF RFID reader. Now picture yourself walking into the Met or Louvre and having your Droid phone lead you on a guided tour. The possibilities are limitless for a UHF reader in a strong mobile platform like the Droid.
Apple is about to make a big mistake and will claim RFID is to blame if it's not adopted, but it will be like the Newton. They are making the wrong decision and someone else will emerge as the big winner. UHF is more useful, more secure, cheaper, and already being heavily adopted. In this instance the victor will be MOT. When MOT calls ODIN to help with their RFID apps we'll be excited to help because it will change the world!
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Wed, Apr 21, 2010
Today's Blog comes from John Kelvie who runs ODIN's software development team and is one of the highest esteemed software CTO's on the East Coast:
The 2010 RFID Journal Live show was a great opportunity for me to catch up with customers as well as learn about what the state of the art is among our partners and competitors. As this is the first RFID tradeshow I've attended, it was very interesting to see what was on display. A few observations that stood out in particular:
Commoditization of RFID readers and tags
By and large, it was remarkable to see just how much conformance and substitutability there was between vendors. And that is not meant to diminish in any way the great work that has been done by many of the manufacturers present. Rather, it shows just how effective the EPC standards have been for our industry, and how widespread their adoption. That said, there is still plenty of aggressive innovation going on within the parameters supplied by the standards - it's just great to see how level the playing field is, letting the best technology shine through rather than market victories via proprietary lock-ins. This also means RFID reader companies will have to start focusing on service and working even closer with their partners if they want to be a winner in the market.
New Innovations in Low-Cost, Short-Range RFID Readers
Several vendors where showing off small-footprint, short-range, low-cost readers and modules based on RFID reader chips manufactured by Austria Micro Systems. One in particular that stood out was by our partner, MTI. They have been making interesting product based on the Impinj R1000 chipset for some time now, product that has fueled our own innovation at ODIN. It's interesting now to contemplate how these new low-cost readers could be potentially applied to the consumer and retail space, where MTI seems to have their eye, as well as in other areas of business, such as our EasyTable and EasyPad solutions, where a short read range is an advantage. The potential for a twenty-dollar reader would seemingly open up a host of possible applications not previously thought feasible.
Simplification of the RFID Software Stack
Despite the increasing complexity of Microsoft's middleware, which conflates adding unnecessary software layers with implementation success, end users are trending the other way. A greatly simplified software stack and standards-based readers were the topic of many of my conversations with end-users, and the occasional student. The other side of the coin with commoditization is that it drives us at ODIN closer to achieving our vision of middleware-free RFID systems. Innovations like our EasyEdge software, which runs directly on the reader devices, obviating the need for middleware and the associated servers, along with functional interchangeability between readers and tags (though devices are by no means substitutable in terms of performance - vendor selections still need to be made carefully) drives us closer to what I see as the real inflection point: direct interface between business and ERP systems and RFID devices. This is what led Savi to choose ODIN as a partner. Once RFID is as easy to enable as plugging a barcode reader into a laptop, the adoption will increase by orders of magnitude.
Overall, it was an exciting conference, and I greatly enjoyed the time I spent with everyone in Orlando. I look forward to another great conference next year!
Posted by Patrick Sweeney on Sat, Apr 17, 2010
ODIN once again had a major presence at RFID Journal Live. We've been a big sponsor since Mark strarted the show in 2003, or was it 2002? The show has come a long way since the table top displays in the hallway of the McCormick center in Chicago.
The biggest thing I noticed was most of the sessions were "standing room only". There appeared to be more people showing up than the show planned for. I spoke at the RFID in Aerospace breakout about FOD prevention and RFID Tool Tracking, and there were ten people standing in the back. When Carlo Nizam, ODIN's client from Airbus, opened the show with his keynote there were 50-60 people standing in the back of the packed hall. I would estimate there were 1,800-2,000 people in the audience. He gave some of the exciting progress around the A350 program and other projects they are working on. It was fantastic when Carlo said "ODIN makes asset tracking so easy a caveman can do RFID" that a Caveman actually got up from the front row an stormed out! Mark Roberti apologized to the audience if they offended any cavemen.
There was a lot of new and interesting technology, we'll get into the weeds of in the coming weeks. The ODIN-Savi announcment was the biggest attended press conference of the show, accoording to the management and that is generating a lot of buzz.The reader manufacturers had a couple of new launches, and there were some very interesting tag developments (inlcuding more Gamma resistant tags for RFID in healthcare). Rush Tracking showed their new forklift,Sirit and Motorola had some exciting new reader technology the ADT booth seemed packed with retail folks. Lots of people asked me about using active RFID and passive RFID on the same platform. And as always the networking was awesome. We'll give some more technical updates next week.
ODIN has closed five new deals in the last six weeks, and we were swamped at the show. Lots of end-users concerned with physics and attaining 99.9% read rates. Many had tried using RFID on their own and were tired of cobbling things together. This means either the economy and industry are at the inflection point, or that ODIN is winning a much larger share of the market. I get the feeling it's a combination of both. We had almost twenty of our clients at the show including two new major clients, and they had a great time being ushered around by our team learning about the technology. There's a lot happening this year, and Mark Roberti once again did a great job of pulling all the players together in a big way. Orlando is also waaay better than Vegas. Attendees were much more engaged and indsutry folks had a lot clearer brighter eyes!