No-frills kits offer starting place for RFID adoption or testing
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Many manufacturers are taking a wait-and-see attitude, or investing only enough in RFID to meet customer requirements, according to a recent survey by Bangalore, India-based InfoSys that found 45 percent of RFID deployments are in response to customer mandates.
Vendors are responding to the needs of that 45 percent with low-cost, easily implemented solutions.
Seeburger offers IDnet, a hosted RFID solution the company says can be installed in under a day. Based on Seeburger's Workbench solution, prices for IDnet start around $500 per month, including onsite printer. The solution matches bar codes to electronic product codes, prints labels, and generates and transmits advance shipping notices. It also verifies labels, issues electronic invoices, maintains a complete audit trail, and prints standard MSL 129 shipping labels for Department of Defense orders. IDnet is meant as an entry-point solution for cost-conscious companies, and as an interim solution for larger companies that cannot deploy enterprisewide systems before mandated deadlines.
Of course, Seeburger is hoping IDnet will be its foot in the door to offer users more robust solutions. CEO Scott Lewin says researchers are looking to include more Workbench functionality in IDnet.
Barcoding Inc.'s RFID compliance kits are priced from $3,000 to $15,000. Three versions are aimed at differing compliance needs. The RFID Mandate Kit includes hardware and software for creating Global Trade Identification Numbers, extracting data from an ERP system, and getting that data on the required tags; while an Evaluation/Lab kit enables testing RFID in specific environments before committing to deployment. An RFID Readiness Kit is aimed at companies that aren't ready to implement RFID, but want to keep their options open. It consists of Zebraprinters and Intermec mobile computers with firmware that can be upgraded for RFID applications.
