Tag snag
This article is taken from a 2009 blog which explored topics in science and technology. These days we hear little about RFID in mainstream media. The technology has been absorbed by the much broader debate around the 'internet of things' (IOT). Nine years on, supermarket checkouts, for example, continue to rely heavily upon barcodes. Is this another example of an over-optimistic timeline for the adoption of a new technology?
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Around five or six years ago, radio frequency identification chips (or 'RFID tags') were technology's hottest topic. RFID signalled the end of the barcode and its replacement with microchipped antennae, enabling radio communications via fixed or hand-held reading devices.
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In June 2003 Wal-Mart issued an ultimatum to its major suppliers. All products would need to be tagged by January 2005. The US Department of Defense made similar demands in October 2004. These announcements sent tremors through corporate America and raised RFID’s profile to unprecedented levels.
According to proponents of the technology, in order to facilitate fully-integrated supply chains, every major component of every product would need to be tagged. Even chips would be chipped!
In 2004, IncuComm, a firm of Texan venture capitalists with interests in the RFID sector, forecast that annual production of RFID tags would rise from 10 million per annum to around 20 billion by 2008. Tag manufacturing was set to boom.
It’s now 2009. So what happened to the RFID revolution? Our experience suggest that the technology’s growth has failed to meet early expectations. In Britain the propagation of RFID solutions has been slow, at least on the high street. A brief survey of UK retailers reveals few products bearing tags. Supermarket checkouts still require a valid bar code on every item.
Arguably, if RFID had achieved widespread adoption by the late 1990s, the technology could have matured before last year’s economic collapse. The money needed to develop and invest in such a technology now is unlikely to be forthcoming from a nervous and near-bankrupt lending community. Indeed it seems likely that full implementation in the UK, and probably elsewhere, will be delayed by a further 5 to 10 years.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart must rescue its own ambitious plans. In 2008 yet more edicts were being issued to suppliers, this despite the fact that Wal-Mart had even failed to complete its own RFID infrastructure.
Regardless of these difficulties, RFID tags promise to transform our lives over the next twenty to thirty years. Wal-Mart’s current challenges are insignificant when placed in the historical context of a massive social and organisational revolution, one that is set to transform every object and every person (that's you and me) into a trackable commodity.
Writer: PJ Moar of Moar Partnerships
Email: p.moar@moar.com
Twitter: @MoarPart
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