RFID case studies suggest uptick in high value item level tagging

That’s the claim from IDTechEx, which runs the RFID Knowledgebase, the world’s largest searchable database of RFID in action, now featuring 2,000 implementations. DTechEx’s Dr Peter Harrop says the greater ROI explains the growing uptake despite higher costs. “US pharmaceutical manufacturers and Western aircraft manufacturers are prepared to pay to get superlative performance at item level,” he says. He also adds that the number of card, payment key fob and passport case studies is now also roughly equal to these two main categories. “We can lump these together because they are non EPC, and based on similar card-type specifications,” he explains. “However, here the big difference is that cards and passport RFID command at least 10 times the unit price of pallet/case tags, and suppliers are generally making money.” IDTechEx suggests that RFID will remain a card business by value of tags and systems for a little longer, with financial, access and other cards being added all the time as the world’s credit, debit, account and identification cards gradually move over to RFID for convenience, reliability and reduced cost of ownership by the issuer/ operator. Next in order from the top three is vehicle tagging, again lucrative, with high prices for the tags and, more important, the systems. The firm also reports rapid penetration of EPC. “Far from being a story of pallet and case tagging just in the USA, the IDTechEx RFID Knowledgebase shows the Electronic Product Code being used in RFID labels in Colombia, Brazil, the Netherlands and Japan, to take just a few,” says Harrop. “EPC is used for pallets, cases, airline baggage and item level from retail to aircraft parts and books in bookstores. Penetration is rapid and global and this is a huge success story. There is potential for EPC to be used in at least one third of the future RFID market by value,” he adds. However, as for more innovative RFID technology – so-called Smart Active Labels (SALs), like those with time temperature recording (TTR) – IDTechEx reports low usage as yet. “About 10 companies are now offering such products, so we may hope to see cases of them in action soon. Near Field UHF is talked about as an alternative to HF for item level tagging but its use is minimal as yet. “Printed transistor circuits were promised for this year but they did not arrive on the market. Meanwhile, good old HF tagging using a silicon chip is steadily appearing in more and more applications, industries and countries. However, a new concept of simple printed conductive stripes has appeared as an RFID solution in several trials in Scandinavia and the USA. Most of the developers of vacuum deposited chipless RFID went belly-up and radically new methods of assembling chips into tags have yet to come on stream.”