RFID: You'll have it and you'll have it by 2005

While RFID may not yet have reached maturity, retailers, logistics firms and food suppliers in Europe are still planning to roll out the technology as soon as they can, according to new research.

More than half the companies in the UK, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium said they rated the technology as a high priority in their IT spending and are planning or currently involved in roll-outs of the trials this year, according to research from LogicaCMG.

Unfortunately for those getting their projects under way this year, issues of standards and the software linking RFID with existing IT infrastructure have yet to be resolved to the industry's satisfaction.

LogicaCMG expects the technological wrinkles to be ironed out by the end of this year. A LogicaCMG spokesman said that the current problems wouldn't translate to disadvantages for the would-be early adopters.

"With all new technology, there's always issues. With RFID, there are still some weaknesses... but these are well-known," he said. "With the supply chain, everything is related. If a retailer starts using RFID, they force its adoption... You set the way RFID will be introduced."

However, while pallet and crate level tagging is getting firms excited, item level tagging is still some way off - the research reckons that 2008 is the most likely date for the more extensive schemes, despite the fact that the research shows this is exactly the type of tagging that retailers want to see introduced.

While tagging at pallet and crate level will mean significant cost savings for retailers in the same way that item-level tagging does, chipping products is the goal for retailers, giving them the opportunity to track items throughout the supply chain rather than just as far as the warehouse.

Nevertheless, LogicaCMG believes that 2005 will be the year when RFID for retailers becomes ubiquitous. "There's a lot of hype in the IT industry," the spokesman said, "RFID is the reality - it's here to stay."