Solution and technologies

RFID is evolving as a major technology enabler for identifying and tracking goods and assets around the world. It can help hospitals locate expensive equipment more quickly to improve patient care, pharmaceutical companies to reduce counterfeiting, and logistics providers to improve the management of moveable assets. It also promises to enable new efficiencies in the supply chain by tracking goods from the point of manufacture through to the retail point of sale (POS).

Challenges:

• Configuration and management of reader devices—Where organizations deploy a large number of readers, the process can be simplified with highly automated tools for set-up, configuration, and batch management.
• Tremendous data volumes—Each RFID tag is scanned several times per second and many facilities will be scanning hundreds of products simultaneously.
• Ination maintenance and look-up—Each time a tag is scanned its key attributes must be looked up in a corresponding database in near real time.
• Ownership and partner data integration—In complex environments, such as the supply chain, supporting infrastructure must protect data that is owned by different business partners.
• Standards and architecture interoperability—Systems must be compliant with EPCglobal standards for defining product attributes and exchanging data.