What does a Ford Ikon car, a library book and your non contact employee ID have in common? Stumped? An RFID chip! RFID seems to be the buzz now a days, people from as diverse backgrounds as IT, Consulting, Supply Chain Management etc are wanting to get in on this trend towards utilizing the benefits from RFID. Most major retailing and manufacturing organizations are using it, but for what? How is it going to help you? What do you need to do in case you want to make a career in RFID? Here is a short attempt to answer all of those questions.
Let us start off by asking the most basic question. What is RFID?
Here's a plain-English explanation of what radio frequency identification is and why it's suddenly become an important technology.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a generic term that is used to describe a system that transmits the identity (in the form of a unique serial number) of an object or person wirelessly, using radio waves. It's grouped under the broad category of automatic identification technologies.
Currently the job described above is done largely by Bar Codes, labels that are stuck to the side of everything from food articles to car chassis’ and are used to store specific information about the items, price, manufacturing date, batch number etc.
Why is RFID coming into vogue now?
RFID technology has been used by a number of companies for a decade or more. The technology is not new, so why is it taking off now?
Until recently, the cost of RFID has limited its use. For many applications, such as tracking parts for just-in-time manufacturing, companies could justify the cost of tags—a dollar or more per tag—by the savings an RFID system could generate. And when RFID was used to track assets or reusable containers within a company’s own four walls, the tags could be reused.
But for tracking goods in open supply chains, where RFID tags are put on cases and pallets of products by one company and read by another, cost has been a major obstacle to adoption. Tags must, in effect, be disposable because the company putting them on cannot recycle them. They get thrown out with the box. (Tags built into pallets could be reused, and some companies are looking to develop ways to recycle tags on corrugated cases.)
The Auto-ID center changed the equation by working with private industry to develop an RFID tag that would be very low cost (the goal was five cents) when manufactured in high volumes. That way, companies could put tags on everything they own and then connect them to the Internet through a secure network.
The 5-cent tag is still several years away. Today tags cost from 20 to 40 cents, depending on their features and packaging. The potential efficiencies created by this visibility are enormous. Companies would be able to reduce inventories while ensuring product is always in the right place at the right time. This situation is called “Stock-out”. Consider an example of a popular brand of toothpaste on a supermarket shelf that has just disappeared due to heavy sales, now there are stocks in the warehouse but until stock is taken no one will have any idea that it is not on the shelf. Customers will buy another brand of toothpaste which automatically means lower sales for the company. Now, consider a toothpaste packet that has a RFID chip embedded into it and a reader on the shelf where it is displayed, as the packets are sold the reader keeps track and at a critical point sends an alert for the units to be replenished with new stock, ensuring that Stock-out does not occur. There are numerous such instances where RFID tagging can help. And because no humans would have to scan the tags, labor costs and errors would also be greatly reduced.
Wal-Mart's push to use RFID in the open supply chain is a big reason why the technology is hot today. But it's not the only reason. Several important factors have come together around the same time. One is the advances in ultra-high frequency RFID systems. UHF systems are able to deliver the read range needed for supply chain applications, such as scanning tags on products as pallets are moved through a dock door or scanning cases on a high shelf in a warehouse.
Think about how much Bar Codes have pervaded and revolutionized the Retailing (Shops, Supermarkets Etc.) and manufacturing, warehousing sector and then imagine replacing them with RFID tags. The issue with Bar Codes is that, because they are made up of paper they can easily be damaged rendering the tag unreadable by a reader. RFID tags however do not suffer from such issues apart from the fact that they can be read wirelessly.
Why get into RFID?
An RFID Journal, a US based journal devoted to developments in the RFID area, survey reveals that salaries are rising as the demand for people with RFID skills and experience increases. However, aside from taking an extensive training course or getting hired by a company and assigned to an RFID project, there's no easy way to acquire RFID-related skills.
As per the survey, looking for a job in the RFID field is a smart idea, because employees with RFID skills are in demand. About 60 percent of the 822 people who have responded to RFID Journal’s online salary survey say there is an RFID skills shortage today. Need proof? Forty-two percent of all respondents have been contacted by a headhunter or company recruiter in the past year. U.S.-based employees (46 percent), corporate managers (55 percent) and workers with more than four years of experience in the RFID field (57 percent) were slightly more likely to have been contacted by a recruiter than others.
Of course the point to be noted here would be that the respondents were people who were already in the RFID arena. This survey is an indicator of the demand for skilled RFID talent as is explained below.
What's clear from the results of the survey is that there is a serious lack of experience in the RFID industry today. Only 17 percent of respondents have more than three years of RFID work experience, while 43 percent have less than one year. The average person surveyed has 1.2 years of experience in RFID apart from experience in their respective industry vertical. That is consistent across region, job function and company size. Not surprisingly, people with RFID experience are in demand and their salaries are rising accordingly.
Respondents with more than four years of RFID work experience earn an average of $13,000 more per annum than employees with one to four years of RFID work experience, and nearly $30,000 more than those with less than a year of experience. (Figures given above are indicative of salaries in the US where there is a much larger impact of RFID jobs compared to India) The Salary range indicated above is for RFID professionals with a significant experience in their respective vertical like manufacturing, retailing, supply chain management, logistics etc. apart from their knowledge in RFID. This can, therefore be called as a value addition to their existing skillset.
The RFID industry is evolving rapidly. Professional training companies are stepping up to provide RFID training programs, and CompTIA and the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility have teamed up to develop a certification program for people who install RFID systems.
That’s good, but training courses are only the first step. Companies need employees with experience, and it takes time for people to gain that experience, make mistakes and learn what works in different industries. End users looking to launch pilots or deploy systems need to make sure the people they hire have hands-on experience.
From:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/archive/1/
Indian Companies on the RFID trail:
Indian companies like Wipro, Infosys, Patni, Intellicon, Chitale Digital, XperTrack, Mumbai, AVAANA, Delhi, Infotek Software and Systems, Pune Etc have been in the fray for quite some time. In fact Infosys is one of the founding members of the EPC Global (
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/about/about.html), an organization entrusted by industry to establish and support a global standard for RFID. Infosys is working with a US-based logistics player in the RFID space. Another Indian Multinational, Wipro, is setting up a lab to study RFID and plans to try out the technology in its Electronic City campus at Bangalore. Patni's Lab has delivered an RFID pilot that integrates with a SAP back-end for processing transactions. It has successfully delivered a complete Animal Tracking System for an overseas customer to track farm animals. Among smaller players, Chitale Digital stands out for incorporating RFID technology in tracking its farm animals for its dairy business which eventually spawned Chitale Digital, who develop RFID technologies.
Recently the RFID Association of India was formed which is a not-for-profit organization founded by leading industry figures to promote the adoption and use of RFID technology and its applications in India and abroad across industry, government and academia. This is also an indication of how serious industry pundits are about RFID its growth and an acknowledgement of its massive appeal in an emerging market like India. This was after the Indian Government allocated radio spectrum for the usage of RFID tags and readers. So the industry seems to be all set for ushering the age of RFID in India.
Where there is a market there are bound to be jobs, as mentioned elsewhere in this article the demand for RFID talent is large however the number of qualified people is miniscule. The only way, as of now, for a person wishing to enter the RFID sector is to either get into a company working on RFID of doing an extensive course in it. However there is no denying the fact that this application area is going to assume huge proportions in the near future and for anybody wishing to make a splash in it needs to start now.
Because the applications of RFID are in so many diverse fields, professionals from these fields can reap the benefits of a value added qualifications/ experience in RFID. Some of the fields that RFID is being used are:
- Manufacturing
- Packaging
- Supply chain management
- Logistics
- Security
- Food and Beverage
- Transportation
- Retailing
The biggest users of RFID as of now, seems to be the Manufacturing, Retailing, Packaging and the Logistics Industry. The possible usages of RFID, however are so diverse that this cannot be considered a complete list of its applications by any stretch of the imagination.
Because this is an emerging technology not a lot of people know about this and hence the paucity of qualified people. Very few institutes actually offer more than a certification course, in effect there is no place that a person can actually go to educate him/herself for the job. However an effort in being made, in recognition of the huge demand for such engineers, by a few institutes, the University of California at Irvine (UC at Irvine) is one such college that is offering a course in RFID starting in the winter of 2006. Details about the course are limited, but watch this space, we will keep you posted.
As far as certifications are concerned there have been noises from some quarters that the formulation of a certification might be a little too early however the majority of the industry pundits suggest that any certification is a step in the right direction. CompTIA announced recently that it's moving forward with plans for a radio frequency identification (RFID) technician certification, RFID+, with a beta exam scheduled to debut in September of 2006, they haven’t given any indications about offering the same certification in India, however we will keep you abreast of the latest in this field.
Links:
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid19_gci1033881,00.html
http://www.comptia.org/search/search.aspx
Conclusion:
RFID is bound to develop into an application that will grow manifold in the future and pervade many aspects of life. Its usage, therefore is a certainty, unavoidable for some and out of choice for others. Like the recent dictate by the Department of Defence and Wal-Mart in the US who have set a deadline for all of their vendors to incorporate RFID chips, vendors in India who supply to companies in the US and other western markets would have to incorporate RFID technology as well.
As RFID tags get cheaper and as more companies begin to see the benefits of RFID tagging more number of companies will start using them. There are several companies in India who have used RFID to their benefit, Chitale being one that comes to mind immediately. The math is simple, demand for qualified talent is more, the supply is miniscule. As a trend RFID is unmistakably large and one that we are standing at the foot of.
Important Links for RFID:
News on Oracle supporting the RFID initiative in India -
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20040426/indianews02.shtml
RFID Spectrum for India -
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1703/1/1/
Latest News on RFID, RFID Gazette –
http://www.rfidgazette.org/
Course in RFID at UCI, for those planning on studying further and specializing in RFID -
http://news.com.com/2061-10790_3-5787394.html?part=rss&tag=5787394&subj=news
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