Your RFID Battle Plan
Electronic tags still don't top CIO strategy lists. But as a tactical weapon, RFID can be used to fight old problems in new ways. Here's a report from IT executives in the trenches with RFID.
At the University of Ghent Hospital in Ghent, Belgium, CIO Bart Sijnave has decided to keep his bar code-based system for drug dispensation tracking. "It's a cheap solution that works," he says.
But Sijnave is testing other RFID uses where the productivity benefit seems to outweigh the costs. To reduce emergency response time in the intensive care unit, the hospital has installed a dense wireless LAN to connect various monitors so they can transmit readings to the patients' electronic medical records and to nurses' monitoring stations. It uses the same Cisco wireless LAN and location software from AeroScout to detect where these often portable monitors are on the floor (by seeking a signal from the RFID tag), and highlights the location to the nurses if a monitor's alarm goes off. "The nurses can now act more quickly," Sijnave says.
Because RFID is a tactical, enabling technology, CIOs will likely find it as part of a larger project or technology proposal. That means that RFID vendors are typically subcontractors to another company such as 3M, NCR, Oracle or SAP, or to a systems consultant such as Accenture, BearingPoint, Capgemini, Computer Sciences, IBM, Infosys Technologies, SAIC, Siemens Energy & Automation, Tata or Unisys. RFID-specific consultancies include AccuCode, Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow, Avaana, Panatrack, RafCore Systems, RFID Global Solution and Savi Technology.
Often, vendors and consultants focus on specific industries. For example, Systech focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, Xterprise on retail and supply chain uses, ADT and Axcess on building security, Aleis International on livestock tracking, Kestrel Wireless on rights management for retail (such as unlocking DVDs once they are bought), Ciber and FileTrail on legal case management, Apriso and Escort Memory Systems on manufacturing plants, Assa Abloy on the hospitality industry, and Zonar Systems on transportation.
In some cases, tag makers such as Alien Technology, Avante International Technology, NXP Semiconductors, RCD Technology, RSI ID Technologies, SecureRF and Texas Instruments act as the lead vendor. Similarly, so do reader makers such as A.C.C. Systems, FEIG Electronics, LXE, Motorola, SecuriCode and Socket Mobile.
In a few cases, networking vendors such as AeroScout, Blue Vector Systems, Cisco Systems, Ekahau, Reva Systems and WhereNet provide RFID technology as part of a larger location-oriented network deployment.
RFID's initial applications have centered around inventory management, such as tracking shipping containers across the supply chain, and now many enterprises are exploring how to get additional benefit from those investments. Wholesale drug company H.D. Smith has used RFID on pallets for several years, plus individual RFID tags on narcotics bottles, "increasing the security of each product along the supply chain," says Rob Kashmer Jr., the company's vice president of IT. The firm expects state governments to soon require the individual tags on drug bottles for safety purposes. Kashmer's team aims to have a leg up when those RFID compliance requirements go into effect.
