Are retailers better equipped to take advantage of RFID than others?
Retail and consumer packaged goods (CPGs) clearly have a leg up over others at the moment. These companies have been pretty active in the definition of RFID's base technology, and that's where they have an advantage. It is applicable to other industries, but for whatever reasons, those others haven't yet really reached the point of maturity regarding RFID that retailers and CPG companies are expressing.
Which companies have the best idea of the demands put on data by RFID?
The retailers have rich data-management strategies and will clearly use them to add RFID. However, I don't think that people have reached the stage where they need to make specific implementation decisions around data management and RFID. This is something people are trying to get their arms around right now, and there are a lot of variables. What amount of data do you actually get? How do you want to present it? How long do you want to keep it? How do you relate it back to existing systems? It's too early to say that anyone, even in retail or CPG markets, has a significant lead over others.
Which standards will be the most important to RFID, and how critical will they be to the overall development of this technology?
There are several important standards that address RFID functionality, specifically radio functionality, which will be particularly crucial. RFID technology will clearly be a worldwide issue, and there must be some way to make it compatible on a worldwide level, which would be a problem right now. Radio regulations in various countries remain different, but those problems are being addressed as we speak.
What nagging issue regarding RFID has been most frequently overlooked?
That has to be the general topic of systems integration, or taking data from the RFID infrastructure and typing it back into the existing IT infrastructure... There are certainly people who know about this and may be talking about it internally, but it hasn't been documented as a significant challenge.
Are there other obstacles for RFID that you feel are not being given enough attention?
When you want to deploy RFID to hundreds of distribution centres and thousands of store locations, at some point in time, you might end up with a significant headache, if you don't design for management up front. You need to be able to monitor this environment so that you can intervene wherever some issues occur. You need to be able to get to a single system view of the overall RFID infrastructure.
