The Four Pillars of RFID
Information Management Magazine, October 2007
RFID technology is conceptually easy to understand. So is data warehousing, and we know there's a lot to data warehousing. RFID is a tagging technology that uses electronic transmitters, or backscatters, containing (usually) a standard code representing the item that it is attached to - whether that is a shirt, an automobile, a cow, a bird, a computer, a pallet of goods or a passport. The tags are read by readers, which are usually in a fixed location.
Hence, the combination of the item, the location, the time of the read and sometimes other factors, such as temperature, provides the meaningful information a company seeks from the use of RFID. The clear advantage is that, through well-placed readers and inference, the company knows close to or exactly where the items are at any point in time. However, the information will be useless unless - and until - there is information access and business knowledge of how to process the information.
The infrastructure setup process is its own discipline. Take, for example, a grocery store. Store chains could issue shopper cards linked to a credit card to create a personalized experience as well as a line-free checkout by breezing through the reader at the end of the shopping experience. It would be erroneous to think that reader saturation is necessary for effective RFID applications. Only key locations such as entrances, exits and pickup areas are required to enable this experience. The many setup factors include the practical problems of "overlap" (multiple readers picking up a tag) and "nonresponse" (no reader picking up a tag). Overlap is an example of an issue that is more prevalent in shipping and receiving areas, where readers are concentrated in high-pallet traffic areas.
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Tag styles can be passive, semipassive or active, as I discussed in my October and November 2006 columns. And, obviously, there are tag reader choices as well. There are also antennae design decisions. And tag generation and ensuring accuracy in printing are not to be taken lightly. RFID tag generation and printing is a major industry in itself.
Once we are past the setup, it's time to deal with the iceberg under the tip - and that is the information onslaught. The amount of information uptake into a corporation when RFID is implemented can be unprecedented. The largest data stores in the world soon will be in manufacturing and will comprise mostly item movement data.
Consider 150,000 items on a retailer's store shelf and a reasonable number of readers to check on the major item movement conditions, and expected traffic comes to two gigabytes of database management system storage per day per store. A 1,000 store chain would generate about two terabytes per day - although the records would be fairly small. Writebacks have yet to emerge commercially, but that also stands as a potential data exploder.
The Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) standard has been recently approved. EPCIS is a way for partners to share information utilizing EPC as the product master. In keeping with the spirit of item-level tracking ability, EPCIS is more granular than its predecessor, GDSN. EPCIS supports push-and-pull models, including, in some cases, open queries for supply chain partners, and paves the way for more data explosion if the retailer decides to track their stock keeping units (SKUs) before they are moved to the retailer's distribution center. This tracking occurs through the manufacturer's EPCIS network. Size estimates on the information to handle with the RFID information architecture increase exponentially.
The SKUs would be placed into cartons, pallets and lots, each of which would be tagged as well. This brings me to the four pillars in the information architecture to support RFID - master data, operational business intelligence (BI), concentration and analytics.
Figure 1: Do you envision your company offering RFID products/services in the next three years?
Master Data
EPC is an emerging standard for assignment of codes for RFID reading. It consists of 96 bits to uniquely define the item. It's broken out like a UPC code with a category and subcategory; but there's also room for a serial number to uniquely identify each item. The existing specification for this code will account for most every physical asset on the planet worth tagging for the foreseeable future. It's important to understand that any reader can read any tag unless cryptography has been applied to the tag.
By any criteria in determining if an external standard should be used, EPC should be used as the RFID product master in a master data management (MDM) environment, hence the interaction of RFID data with MDM. The EPC standard is huge, but what would be interesting is a scaled-back version including just the products the company interfaces with.
Operational Business Intelligence
In my regular column "Building Business Intelligence," I have been writing about operational business. RFID information management is an excellent modern example of the need for operational BI.
In RFID context, this is where operational actions are processed in real time. Most reads will be normal business and not require much intelligence. For example, at a ski resort, a tag read may compare the tag number to valid tags issued that day and open the gate if the tag number is valid. The American Express Blue Card will send an authorization transaction for the card number to its authorization system. A store might tackle the operational issues of theft, shrinkage, temperature sensitivity of certain products, replenishment, etc. Customs may check the person, via his passport, against a terrorist list.
This pillar will require intelligent deduplication of the streaming location data as well as intelligent matching of relationship data such as what truck was carrying which lots based on proximate timestamps at the same reader location.
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