May 16,2007_The cost of tags is often cited as one of the barriers to adoption of RFID technology. But another barrier is emerging, according to Jamie Kress, senior director of sales for Vue Technology, which supplies solutions for item-level tagging: That¡¯s the cost of implementing an RFID infrastructure to take advantage of RFID data from tagged cartons, pallets or individual items.

Building a mobile infrastructure for RFID data
That¡¯s why Vue Technology introduced a mobile RFID platform that can be installed on a laptop computer at RFID Journal Live. The platform allows a company to read RFID tags on its merchandise in areas where readers aren¡¯t otherwise installed.

¡°The cost of tags has to be addressed,¡± says Kress. ¡°But at the end of the day, the cost of tags isn¡¯t going to stop someone from using RFID if it can deliver value. The bigger challenge is the concern about the cost of an RFID infrastructure and the ability to scale that solution from a pilot to a facility to the enterprise.¡±

Take item-level tagging.Even if all of a company¡¯s products are tagged at the manufacturing line, you need an infrastructure of RFID readers in a distribution center or a store before you can track them. Installing a reader at a dock door, or in the stock room of a retail store, is one thing; expanding that infrastructure throughout the DC or an entire store¡ªor stores¡ªis something else entirely.

Learning from pilot projects
Kress says that¡¯s one of the lessons Vue learned from early pilots of item-level tagging in retail stores. ¡°We did projects for Best Buy that included shelf-level readers. But they also had a promotions rack without readers where 20% of the merchandise was going to be sold,¡± says Kress. ¡°We got around that by creating a mobile cart with a laptop and a handheld reader. Being able to take the infrastructure to those areas was a way to take advantage of the tags without the cost of adding fixed readers.¡±

That same concept was behind the development of the new offering. ¡°By enabling a laptop with enterprise-level RFID software and a hand-held reader, you can take your RFID infrastructure with you, even if readers aren¡¯t installed in a store,¡± says Kress. ¡°Now a sales rep for a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company can monitor store-level inventory or promotions compliance of tagged merchandise even if there are no readers inside a store.¡±

source: www.mmh.com