RFID Road

While compliance with retail regulations gave the initial push to
logistics-oriented RFID applications in the consumer and retail sectors, the
pharma, aerospace and defence (A&D), and third party logistics industries
are catching up, says Dr Krish Mantripragada, director of business
development with SAP, in a talk with Ravi Menon of Dataquest

What traction is RFID now seeing in logistics? Which
sectors are taking advantage of these opportunities?

Worldwide, with the initial push being provided by retail compliance mandates
from the likes of WalMart, Target, Albertsons, Metro, Tesco, and DoD, logistics
is the first major application to take advantage of passive RFID technology on a
commercial scale.

In
India, the applications currently gaining traction are automated inbound and
outbound logistics, discrepancy reduction, and electronic proof of delivery as
well as automated shipping and receiving processes.

This
started in the consumer products and retail industry, and is quickly spreading
to other industries such as pharmaceuticals, and 3rd party logistics.

How
are logistics providers dealing with the services side of RFID-retailer
mandate compliance, asset optimization etc? What is the long-term potential of
RFID in eliminating business interruptions?

The new levels of visibility provided by RFID are being used to improve asset
utilization and boost turnover. Companies such as CHEP Automotive are using RFID
to manage their vast number of returnable containers such as totes and pallets.
By accurately tracking the flow of these containers, these companies can now
better manage their utilization and can also ensure timely product delivery. The
long-term potential would be to reduce interruptions caused by lack of
visibility, inaccurate information, and lack of timely data about the location,
position, and condition of goods and assets. This would increase the fidelity of
communication between trading partners and help smoothen out business
relationships.

How
are standardization practices emerging in active RFID implementations? How
should logistics providers be advocating the same?

As more RFID implementations emerge, standardized repeatable patterns are
emerging and lessons are being shared. EPC Global has a whole workgroup focused
on discussing pilot and implementation details. It would be in the interest of
logistics providers and others to benefit from the discussions in these working
groups.

Why
are there complaints of a shortage of strong consultants and systems integrators
in the market? How would you rate the domain expertise of SIs currently working
on RFID projects worldwide?

RFID projects bring together several skills and levels of expertise together to
realize value that has not traditionally been so. These include skills built
around SCM, enterprise architectures, data management, RF, hardware, sensors,
and middleware. Hence, the market is experiencing some growing pains in bringing
together these disparate sets of skills under a single context to gain maximum
value. However, several SIs are today building large practices and staffing up
their resources with these diverse skills.