Guten Tag! (EPC is Alive and Well)
I spent the past few days in Cologne, Germany (photo from room at Hyatt Cologne at left), with the board of a global standards body focused on EPC. Asked to speak on correlations between adoption of the Internet and the potential for EPC, I highlighted the amazing adoption we've seen over the past 10 years of the Web, with e-commerce and other markets far surpassing even the wildest expectations circa 1995. MIT professor/Oat Chief Scientist Sanjay Sarma spoke as well, and gave a rousing talk about the Japanese auto industry's adoption of Six Sigma to overtake the U.S. "BIg 3" automakers, drawing the parallel to EPC and RFID as enablers of similar market shifts - for those who take advantage of them before their competitors. Herein are a few additional thoughts, insights and observations from Cologne.
1) "EPC" is not the same asl "RFID". Most of us who spend time around this industry understand this, but the media often used the two terms interchangeably. RFID is a technology, EPC is a standard. Today, we are using the EPC standard data structure on 2D barcodes as well as RFID, and who knows where it may be used in the future. Let's not confuse the two. They are, probably inextricably linked for some period of time as EPC correlates to serialization and RFID is the "hot" serialization technology of choice right now. Let's see if we can start to use the terms correctly, and the coverage will follow.
2) EPC is global. We hear this, know it, and believe it, but sometimes it takes a room full of executives from around the world - China, Germany, the U.S., the U.K., Korea, etc. - to confirm it. There is wordlwide interest in the potential for EPC and RFID, and global players are playing a meaningful role in helping move things forward. Wal*Mart and Metro get a lot of the attention, but believe me there are 100's of other global players involved and taking very visible roles (and not just in Retail).
3) Security and Privacy are real issues, and the industry needs to do a better job of addressing both. On the consumer privacy front, I have been impressed with the steps our customers have taken where and when seeking to pilot RFID and EPC in a customer environment - and we haven't had a single complaint from a consumer. However, despite sometimes being confused around the actual capabilities of passive RFID technology and EPC, the policy concerns raised by consumer privacy advocates are very real, and the industry needs to do a better job of innovating and responding to these concerns. On the security front, we've seen some early "hacking" by groups exposing some of the holes in early versions of RFID and EPC. There are numerous initiatives to get ahead of the curve on this, including various working groups within EPCglobal and elsewhere, but the industry needs to work harder to incorporate best practices and capabilities from other markets such as the Web (see: RSA/EMC, Symantec, VeriSign and others).
4) There's more happening than you think. Companies throughout the world are running incredibly compelling pilots and small-scale rollouts, you're just not hearing much about them. There are several reasons for this, teh two primary ones being a) fear of backlash in the media (over consumer privacy concerns) and b) true competitive advantage. This second point bears more coverage - having been involved with and led more than 50 RFID engagements worldwide (including many at the item level in pharma and retail), I can vouch for the concept - there is very real, and very significant, competitive advantage at stake. Companies are not only learning more about their own processes (good and bad), a concept Dr. Sarma highlighted (correlating RFID to a tracer in the bloodstream, designed to show at a very granular level the good parts and bad), but also gaining more insight into the real potential for RFID and EPC in their future operations. These learnings are being incorporated into design (products, packaging, shelving, store layouts, manufacturing lines, etc.) as well as budgets and technology architectures. Thus, many of these industry leaders are not anxious to share their insights with others, believing they are uncovering true sources of competitive advantage. It will be interesting to see 10 years from now whether some of these companies "slingshot" past their competitors, much like the Japanese did in the auto industry via the use of Six Sigma (per Dr. Sarma's analogy).
Nothing revolutionary here, just a few observations that reinforce the positive momentum EPC and RFID are making on a global basis. It's going to take some time, but we will see a major impact from these innovations over the next decade.
