- Some of the biggest names in technology -- IBM, Microsoft,
Phillips, Oracle -- came out strong on RFID [recently], with announcements
of initiatives and pilot projects.
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- The rush of announcements is due to mandates from Wal-Mart
and the Department of Defense that key suppliers begin tracking of pallets
of goods by January 1, 2005 with radio frequency identification (commonly
referred to as RFID).
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- "Top suppliers have no choice but to get ready for
this," said Nucleus Research analyst Kathy Quirk. "There's enough
business out there for vendors to need to make the outreach to customers.
You have a captive audience that needs to get a solution in place, with
a tight deadline."
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- That deadline is tight indeed. With most of these vendors
planning to have their RFID solutions in distribution mid-year, suppliers
are in the position of either betting their relationships with top customers
on pilot software or scrambling to get their RFID projects up in just six
months.
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- Adding to the mix, Oracle Tuesday announced that the
next version of its Oracle Warehouse Management software would include
RFID and electronic product code (EPC) capabilities. The announcement took
place at the software vendor's AppsWorld users' conference, held in San
Diego this week.
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- The new version of the software is expected to allow
for automated processing of inbound and outbound shipments of pallets or
individual cases of products. The company said the information would be
available to its Oracle 10g Database and Server systems. Oracle said it
expects to ship the new version of the software this summer.
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- The company said that 7-Eleven has been evaluating the
technology for the last year. "We are keenly interested in the new
RFID capabilities within Oracle Warehouse Management," 7-Eleven CIO
Keith Morrow said in a statement.
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- On Monday, IBM and Royal Philips Electronics said they
would work together to develop RFID hardware and software for supply chain
management, retail and asset management. They'll also cooperate on developing
sophisticated smart cards with biometric authentication for banks, governments
and event ticketing. For example, smart cards could be used to identify
recipients of government services such as health care.
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- Eric Gabrielson, world wide director RFID of solutions
for IBM Global Services, said the two companies plan to provide an end-to-end
product, from tags to middleware to business consulting, that's based on
industry standards. The companies will comply with the EPCglobal specifications
for RFID technology.
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- IBM and Phillips have already started one joint project:
an RFID system for Philips Semiconductors' manufacturing and distribution
facilities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In the first phase, wafer cases and
carton packages will be tagged at Philips Semiconductors' Kao Hsiung manufacturing
site in Taiwan and the division's distribution center in Hong Kong. The
project began in November and will be up and running by the end of 2004.
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- Gabrielson said the companies would use the internal
project as a proof of concept. "It has a specific return on investment
that they want to try to find," he said. "We'll combine skills
with Phillips and learn from each other to create industry vertical solutions."
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- Not one to be left on the sidelines, Microsoft Business
Solutions Monday also revealed details of a pilot project with Danish snack
manufacturer KiMs. KiM is a midsize Danish manufacturer that ships some
100,000 pallets of snacks per year. The project extended Microsoft Axapta
business software, which KiMs already uses, to incorporate data from RFID
tags into demand planning, event management, trading partner collaboration
and warehouse management. The project went live in December 2003 after
three months of work.
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- This news followed RFID announcements last week from
SAP and TIBCO. SAP announced a package built on its Web Application Server
that manages data received via RFID tags and integrates it with SAP R/3
and mySAP ERP. The company said it has done pilot projects with Procter
& Gamble. TIBCO announced a partnership with tag maker Alien Technology
to let Alien's tags send data through TIBCO's integration infrastructure.
Both SAP and TIBCO hope to have their products in distribution by the middle
of this year.
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- However, suppliers need to keep in mind that they won't
see any return on their RFID investments in the short term, according to
analyst Shrupi Yadev, also of Nucleus Research. But the arrival of major
software vendors should give them some confidence.
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- "It will be helped by the fact that IBM and Phillips
and companies like them are starting with in-house deployments," she
said. "Then, they'll extend that as an offering for their customers.
Definitely, it will be reassuring to customers that companies are pouring
R&D into this area."
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- This story was originally published on January 27, 2004.
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- Copyright 2004 Jupitermedia Corporation All Rights Reserved.
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- http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3304661
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