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!
Posted by Bret Kinsella on Fri, Mar 19, 2010
“The reality is that most end users don't know—or care—how a tag or sensor communicates, whether it has an onboard CPU and so forth. What they care about is what RFID does: can it solve their problem?”
Mark Roberti of RFID Journal hit the nail on the head in his February post when he said RFID users don't care. RFID adoption is not about technology, it is about improving business processes to cut cost, increase throughput, enhance security, improve visibility and reduce risk. This is different than 2004-06.
During that time, we spoke with many buyers who were interested in learning how each component worked and why we were recommending one RFID technology or vendor over another. Since it was their first exposure to RFID and there were few third party user references, many buyers perceived a great deal of purchase risk and wanted to be educated. Vendors obliged.
Reader and tag manufacturers hungry for customers would tout the performance of their wares and discuss how they operated differently from competitors. At ODIN, through discussions and benchmarks we often were asked to provide an objective evaluation of these vendor claims and in turn took time to further educate buyers. While we still have a loyal following for ODIN’s RFID Benchmark Series™, buyers are more likely to ask us how fast can we install, what else we’ve done in their industry or our experience integrating RFID into SAP than what kind of tag we recommend.
RFID Physics still matters because performance is essential
So does the physics of RFID still matter? Yes.It has simply taken its rightful place behind the business value discussion. RFID performance is more important than ever. As buyers have zeroed in on solving business problems, they are expecting reliable performance. If they don’t get the performance, they don’t get the benefits. While the discussion focuses on benefits, timelines and integration interdependences, the scientific work designing reliable and scalable RFID systems becomes a checklist item for the buyer and a responsibility of the provider.
Thankfully, RFID reader and tag vendors have made great progress over the past five years improving price and performance. At the same time, client expectations have grown and tougher use cases have emerged.
Better RFID Performance is an Opportunity and an Obligation
The lesson for RFID product and solution providers is to put forth high performing solutions that enable substantial business benefits. You can do this through the many components that drive RFID performance: tags, readers, antennas, software, material flows and business processes. If you can adjust these variables properly, you can deliver the 99.9% or higher accuracy that is often needed.
The lesson for end users is that you should present a clear business objective and manage to it. It’s not about the technology. It’s about what it can do for your business. However, you also should ask your suppliers how they expect to achieve the high read accuracy performance you require. Do they understand how to leverage different components, software and processes in order to make subtle performance improvements? That knowledge may be the difference between project success and failure.
Bret Kinsella is one of ODIN Executive Leaders and recognized RFID industry veteran.