RFID Smart Labels Breaks New Ground in London

Published: October 15, 2006, By pffc-online.com

PRESS RELEASE

IDTechEx's RFID Smart Labels Europe Conference and Exhibition was held on September 19-20. Over 350 delegates from 30 countries rated speakers from San Francisco International Airport and Manchester Airport Group to be particularly interesting. They described RFID markets that have come from nowhere, including baggage tagging and people tagging for reducing queues and improving safety and accuracy. Drug tagging also was covered, primarily for anti-counterfeiting. The message of both the conference and the Masterclasses was that conventional supply chain optimisation is proving difficult with the chosen UHF frequency across the world because radio regulations, until they are eased, cause technical problems and most consumer goods suppliers see no payback in pallet and case tagging and drag their feet.

Marks and Spencer UK and Boekhandels Group Netherlands discussed exceptions to the UHF technical problems where the product is dry and non-metallic and reader density is low.

Paul Fox of Procter and Gamble/Gillette discussed the counterfeiting challenges. Opportunities with Near Field UHF in item level tagging were explained to packed rooms by Richard Fletcher of TagSense and Ian Forster of Avery Dennison.

Another trend is the interest in solution providers because more of these are profitable and they land the big orders. LogicaCMG, Vue Technology, Siemens and others emphasized the importance of solution selling. At the tag level, EM Microelectronics warned that “compromise equals complexity” as seen in the Gen 2 chips with so many “nice if” features being added.

Gold Sponsor Wavetrend headed up the Active RFID session. It is tackling a remarkable variety of opportunities in both Real Time Locating Systems and conventional active RFID worldwide. Speakers said that the market is booming with space for WiFi, ultra wide band, smart active labels and sensor systems.

To learn more, visit idtechex.com.