Campbell Soup uses caution, uncovers realities of emerging RFID technology
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2005 7:00:00 AM
Most of the 3,000-plus people at RFID World 2005, held in Dallas in early March, were manufacturers seeking to learn how their companies could benefit from the technology.
Some of them may not have liked what they heard.
"In the short term, there is no economic return [from the use of RFID]," Eric Dzwonczyk, senior director of sales & marketing IT for Campbell Soup, Camden, N.J., said during a workshop on linking RFID with enterprise systems. "It's primarily a cost, but one that can eventually show returns if a company is patient and looks for ways of doing more than just slapping RFID tags on products to satisfy a customer's requirement."
To that end, Dzwonczyk said, Campbell adopted a two-part RFID strategy. The first part involves applying tags for the satisfaction of customers like Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense. Having met customer requirements, Campbell now is working on what Dzwonczyk said is "a three- to five-year plan [for using RFID] to transform our business." He said executing such a plan requires learning about the technology and the vendors that sell it. This includes knowing the right places to position both tags and readers to ensure accurate reads. "We learned that containers of microwavable soup didn't work well because they absorb radio waves."
Dzwonczyk also cautioned, "Don't believe the vendor hype. There will be a shake-out in this industry that includes suppliers of tags, antennas, readers, middleware, and even system integrators. Make sure you are dealing with vendors that are credible and can deliver what they promise."
Dzwonczyk also cited middleware as the one component that's most important to getting strategic value from RFID data, but also the most confusing.
"The key to gaining value is making sense of the data you get back after tagged items have been delivered to the customer," Dzwonczyk said. "Putting some intelligence around that data can enable better business decisions."
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