For telecommunication companies, RFID means business potential. For the technology to be effective, it must be part of a multiple-stage system. This increases the demand for high-capacity network infrastructure and services. As the technology becomes more widely used, more applications are expected to emerge in both homes and in enterprise.

It is not a completely new technology.

Airports have started trials in which the barcodes on luggage tags are combined with RFID chips to improve luggage handling. RFID chips are placed in luggage tags on bags at the check-in counter, and receivers are placed along various stages of the luggage conveyer belt to steer the bag in the right direction.

In Norway, trials have begun in which livestock have chips placed under their skins at birth. The information stored on the RFID tag throughout any specific animal’s life can then be summarized and put on the cuts of meat that finally end up in the supermarket meat section. The consumer will be able to determine when the animal was born, where it was bred and butchered, and whether any specific remarks have been made concerning the animal.

RFID suppliers and standardization organizations alike believe that the technology will flourish in the wake of these trials. So far, the development and production of RFID has been too expensive for the technology to be used in smaller, everyday products and services. But ever-more uses are being found for the technology, and the price is coming down.

“This is the future,” says Jan Bogne at IT consultancy Sogeti in Oxelösund, Sweden, which has developed an RFID solution for Svenskt Stål AB (SSAB) in Oxelösund. “RFID technology has now been around long enough that it is ready for a much larger target group. We will see more RFID in everyday consumption, but there are still a few technical problems to be solved if we want to tag, for example, all products in the produce industry. It is not far away, though.”

SSAB Oxelösund has installed RFID tags on all loading pallets used for internal transport and loading, and RFID receivers in their forklifts, which in turn are connected to a WLAN (wireless local-area network). When the information in the RFID tag on the loading pallet is read, the pallet’s GPS position is automatically stored and can be seen by the forklift driver.

Sören Thelander, at SSAB Oxelösund, says the system has dramatically improved safety and cut costs and lead times.

“Before, we had to keep track of our loading pallets and register them manually – typing them in by hand. And hands make mistakes,” Thelander says. “Now, the drivers know where they can find the pallets and do not have to register any transports or deliveries manually. It not only improves safety for the drivers, it has made our supply chain more efficient – we have higher delivery precision and shorter lead times.”

Thelander agrees that this is just the beginning for RFID technology. SSAB Oxelösund has used it for a couple of years and is just now starting to look at expanding its use.

“This is just the beginning,” Thelander says. “We are already seeing a strong need for new applications. So far we have used RFID for internal steel transportation in our warehouses. Now we will expand and use the system in further areas, such as handling the steel plates that we use for tests. I think RFID will be the way we handle all our logistics in the future.”

Staffan J Thorsell