Chips ahoy
The easiest way to understand RFID is that it is intended to replace the bar code, and it functions in much the same way. The RFID tag works in conjunction with a reader that emits radio waves as it searches for tags. Once a tag and a reader come in contact, the chip broadcasts its identification number exactly as a bar code does. Unlike bar codes, however, RFID tags can be read up to 40 feet away by any compatible reader device. There’s no need to place a tag directly in front of a reader, and readers can read multiple tags at once.
As Katherine Albrecht, a consumer advocate and co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID (Nelson Current, 2005), explains, a bar code assigns the same SKU number to every product. That is, each six-pack of beer that is scanned reveals the same number. But RFID assigns a unique number to each item, which means that individual beer bottles can be tracked.
Just as important, where bar codes are visible, RFID tags are designed to be hidden. While many tags are currently placed on the back sides of shipping labels, manufacturers are working on ways to embed them in a product’s packaging. As of now, no law requires anyone to inform the public that the products you buy might be affixed with RFID tags.
In 2003, Wal-Mart announced that suppliers must put RFID tags on shipping pallets sent to its stores, which created an RFID market that slashed the prices of tags. Today, major corporations and governments that had previously been unable to afford the technology are drafting plans to adopt RFID, indicating that the start of the much-talked-about RFID revolution is under way.
At an RFID trade show — “Smart Labels USA” — held in Boston last month, industry leaders outlined a future in which home appliances equipped with RFID could speak to one another. Washing machines and ovens will eventually preset themselves, trade-show delegates said, and refrigerators will manage their own contents by reading tags on food items containing expiration dates, recipe suggestions, and cooking instructions.
“Imagine going home, taking out meat, and having the oven read it and preset the oven,” Geoff Seago, vice-president of marketing at the Emirates Technical Innovation Center, told fellow trade-show delegates. Seago says his company has already begun work on a futuristic supermarket in which all food items will bear RFID tags that moderate temperature and contain extensive expiration information.
The technology will allow companies to follow products as they are transported from manufacturers’ headquarters to distribution centers and stores. And once RFID readers are placed on shelves, they will manage inventory and reorder items when stock runs low. Eventually, registers will even scan RFID tags and charge the items to a store account, eliminating the need for cash registers, Seago said at the Boston RFID trade show.
By planting readers around a store, trade-show delegates said, customers could be identified by RFID-embedded technology they are carrying. They could then be followed remotely as they browse, and the items they look at and purchase would be recorded and stored in a database, which marketers could use to target an individual’s consumption patterns.
