RFID Industry Ratifies Important Data-Sharing Standard

Most standards ratifications in the technology industry don't generate much excitement. But the ratification yesterday of EPCIS could give a big boost to the RFID industry, by finally giving businesses a standard way to capture and share information collected by radio-frequency identification chips.

EPCIS, or Electronic Product Code Information Services, provides a standard set of interfaces for EPC data. Chris Adcock, president of the standards organization EPCglobal, called Monday's ratification as potentially having more impact than the 2004 release of the UHF Gen2 Passive RFID standard. Those are big words, since the Gen2 standard led to the development of considerably cheaper and better performing Gen2 RFID chips. Executives from such companies as IBM, Proctor & Gamble, and Wal-Mart are applauding the EPCIS ratification.

Five years after proponents began insisting that RFID would dramatically change the way companies track goods in the supply chain, RFID remains a niche technology partly held back by the complexities associated with exchanging information captured by RFID and turning it into knowledge that leads to such basic business goals as lower costs or higher revenues.

Just 600, or about 3%, of Wal-Mart's suppliers have started using RFID since the retailer announced its famous supply chain "mandate" four years ago. The slow uptake is prompting Wal-Mart to drastically scale back its plans for the technology in distribution centers, since so many cases and pallets still arrive stamped with bar codes, and instead focus on the in-store benefits of RFID. EPCIS, however, is a significant step in helping suppliers such as Proctor & Gamble get valuable information from any RFID data they collect and exchange with Wal-Mart.

Vendors involved in the interoperability testing of EPCIS -- and those likely to offer products that support the standard -- include Auto-ID Labs, Avicon, BEA Systems, Bent Systems, IBM, Globe Ranger, IIJ, NEC, Oracle, Polaris Systems, Samsung, and T3Ci.

Still, while EPCglobal and RFID vendors are working to create standards-based RFID technologies and processes, other challenges remain. RFID tags are still too costly in many instances, and RFID pioneers continue to struggle with what to do with all of the data they're collecting from the tags, and how to turn it into real business intelligence.