July 8, 2008 – Longtime Switchboard friend Sue Hutchinson, Director of Industry Adoption for EPC Global North America, reveals her insider view of Gen 2 enhancements underway now.
It appears to me that Gen-2, itself, and RFID in general is moving in all sorts of different directions. For example, w hear a lot of people talking about a new improved Gen-2. Does the new improved mean that the standards have changed?
HUTCHINSON: What we have been working on is some additional capabilities for Gen-2, that are optional, that ride on top of the base standards. Not everybody will use the optional portion of this next revision to Gen-2. But, the Gen-2 standards still remains very strong.
What we have been seeing, which we think is tremendously exciting, is that the promise we always knew would be there when we got to a standard – a solid standard platform – is starting to happen.
We are seeing a lot of companies innovate above and beyond the standard. This way they can be compliant with the standard, use the standard tag, but offer such incredible additional capability – in terms of range and sensitivity – they are even moving up into the areas that you might traditionally think of as real time locating systems. This is all with technology that is, absolutely, out-of-the-box-compatible to Gen-2. That is really exciting to see.
People have told us over the last year or so that they are already using “better Gen-2 tags.” They are still Gen-2 tags, but better than they had used, let's say two years ago. What has made them “better?” Is there something enhancing the standard, or do the standards remain and they are building onto that?
HUTCHINSON: The standard remains; we are building onto it.
And I think we are getting smarter and smarter about different form factors of tags, different antenna designs, which lets us improve sensitivity for different kinds of applications. So it is the same protocol, the same standard; but we are coming up with new and exciting uses of the technology just about every day.
And the EPCIS system --
HUTCHINSON: It is a “standard” (not a “system”).
I thought it was sort of a way to “the master list” of item codes. Please help me understand better what it is.
HUTCHINSON: Sure. EPCIS, EPC Information Service, is a standard for letting us have a common communication about visibility of physical things: my assets; my locations; my items in transit.
It is just a way for us to answering four quick questions. What, when, where and why?
- What is the good that I saw?
- Where was I physically when I saw it?
- What date and time?
- And, most importantly: Why? What step in this process was I in when I read the EPC for this particular item.
Now, the fun thing about this standard is that it is meant to be usable with all of these technologies; so if you and I are speaking using EPC, I still have an EPCIS conversation. We share web services. We can do communications with each other that way. Send structured email. We can still communicate with each other the same way.
So, essentially, it is orderly way to communicate so everybody is speaking the same language that you are.
HUTCHINSON: Absolutely. It is also an orderly way to capture that data; take the raw read to them; to come up through filtering in the middle and combine them with some business intelligence; and to capture that intelligent reading in a way that you and I can use it.
This is what makes it possible, let's say, for the Sam’s Club suppliers, and Wal-Mart suppliers, when they send their goods, they now have visibility of their goods in the Sam’s and the Wal-Mart process. When those events are recorded and made available to them for retailing. So, it is like putting almost a spy, a set of eyes and ears, to find out how you . . .
(interrupting) You had better be careful about how we use the word spy here in RFID Land!
HUTCHINSON: We mean it in a good way. When we have end-to-end visibility in the supply chain, we know where the gaps are. We know where the holes are. We know where we need to get smarter. So having that visibility is very, very useful.
Now, the last question on standards: when people talk about powered tags, whether called battery-assisted passive or other nomenclature, does that relate to Gen-2 at all?
HUTCHINSON: We are starting to work to get that to relate to Gen-2. We have a joint requirement now started around sensors and batteries.
If you think about the pharmaceutical industry, the chemical industry, in fact, even fresh foods and produce, we have needs for that sensor input so that again we add another dimension to that visibility information. We are in the process now of gathering those user requirements – then working through the technology of how this will be used as a supplement to what we are doing with the straight passive tags.
And obviously all of this still employs EPCIS, because that is the communications, not the source.
HUTCHINSON: Absolutely. We designed that network very carefully so we can continue to add the layers as we got smarter about how the technology is going to be done.
