Given the current economic conditions I really didn't know what to expect from the 2009 RFID Journal Live conference. Yes, attendance was down significantly...but so was the hype. In past years it seemed as if there was a concerted focus on a limited set of industry specific topics such as supply chain centric case/pallet tagging and item level tagging in the pharmaceutical industry. This year was more broad and pragmatic. The RFID industry is maturing...and this is a very good thing.
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RFID TagSource is the leading provider of RFID tagging solutions for high value asset management applications. We combine best-of-breed durable RFID tags with labeling, encoding, and customization services to support our customers project initiatives.
What's New
With all due respects to well intentioned privacy advocates, the manner in which Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and related technologies have been associated with “Big Brother” scenarios is unfortunate and often blatantly incorrect.
The EPC Gen2 passive UHF RFID standard adopted in 2004 required that RFID tags/silicon must provide a minimum of 96 bit of data to support the EPC numbering scheme. For supply chain applications 96 bits is all they need and I do not see this changing anytime soon. For asset management applications, where the overwhelming majority of our customers are deploying RFID, a unique identifier is all that is required.
The RFID market has changed dramatically since the famous retailer mandates announced in 2003. The knowledge and experience we have gained over the years has enabled us to provide a great deal of value to our customers and partners. Now it is time for us to share it with the world.
Motorola RD5000
Extend the reach of your RFID network and achieve a new level of visibility with the RD5000 Mobile RFID Reader. This compact, rugged reader can be installed almost anywhere — on material handling equipment such as forklifts, on carts, portable conveyors and other places where a cabled reader would not be practical.
Motorola XR450
Motorola’s XR450 RFID reader is an industrial-class, fixed RFID reader designed for business-critical, dense-reader deployments. With both mono-static and bi-static antenna operation capability, it has the flexibility to meet a wide range of application and environment needs.
Industrial manufacturers have long sought a solution to keeping track of specialty tools and high value inventory items. Manual systems have proven to be difficult to implement and unreliable. Barcode systems require the operator have direct line-of-site to the barcode, which is often impractical in manufacturing environments.
There are numerous organizations in the RFID industry that offer product testing and evaluation services. Many of these offer to sell the results of their evaluations for an often hefty fee. For individuals interested in the physics of how RFID works this information may have some value. For most though this information has little value since it a lab environment bears no resemblance of the actual environment in which your application will be deployed.
Our recommendation are as follows:
Standard EPC Gen2 RFID tags are made up of an integrated circuit (IC or chip) and a passive tag antenna (together called an inlay). Most often these are integrated into a label material. The key differentiating features of these tags are antenna design and storage capacity; the same label “packaging” can be used on any standard inlay. Often referred to as "Smart Labels", these are the tags most associated with supply chain applications such as those promoted by Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense.
For large RFID project deployments many organizations engage with established systems integrators. This is especially true for RFID applications (e.g. asset management) that are not aligned with a particular industry. Working with an experienced integrator can help your team ramp up quickly and establish an internal knowledge base for continued support. We work with many of these organizations and will gladly recommend one or more that may be a good fit for your project.