Jan/Feb 2004

Most UK companies have not yet adopted radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies in their supply chains, and have no intention of doing so - despite the fact that worldwide standards for RFID are now emerging.

That's the finding of a survey by Britain's e.centre, the organisation that promotes standards for barcodes and similar systems in the UK. It found 95 per cent of companies had no definite RFID plans in place.

RFID is the technology that's tipped to take over from barcodes eventually for many supply-chain tracking and identification purposes.

e.centre says it questioned a sample of supply-chain managers from medium to large enterprises, and found that although 88 per cent of those questioned agreed that RFID was a beneficial technology, only eight per cent were using or piloting RFID in their organisations.

 

The centre says the results are particularly surprising, since it found in a poll of FMCG retailers last summer that 40 per cent of respondents were planning RFID deployment by 2005.

The emerging RFID standard is EPC (it just stands for Electronic Product Code), which is being developed by an organisation called EPCglobal, a joint venture between EAN International and the Uniform Code Council.

According to e.centre chief executive Steve Coussins, EPC "removes the final stumbling block to the technology's integration with bar coding and other business-to-business communications."