Companies Unprepared To Handle RFID Data

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November 05, 2004 (5:09 PM EST)

By TechWeb Technology News

Many companies preparing to implement electronic tags to track goods through supply chains are ill prepared to handle the massive amounts of data that will be gathered as marked products pass through tracking devices, a market research firm said Friday.

In a survey of end users of radio-frequency identification technology, 58.9 percent and 54.8 percent said they were "highly concerned" with data quality and data synchronization, respectively, market researcher Venture Development Corp. said.

Many respondents indicated that they were experiencing difficulty extending RFID pilots, especially in the consumer goods, pharmaceutical and military supply chains, because corporate legacy systems couldn't easily handle the unprecedented amount of information, VDC said.

Some pilot projects, for example, were missing 30 percent or more of the tags passing by reading devices, producing a high volume of false negatives, VDC said. Meanwhile, readers kept recording several times a second, piling up questionable data.

As a result of these and other issues with RFID data integration, collection, aggregation and filtration, survey respondents said clean data and data synchronization had emerged as a top priority for any RFID implementation, VDC said.

RFID has become a major initiative in the retail industry as a result of 2005 mandates from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer; Target Corp., Albertsons Inc. and others. A similar mandate has been imposed by the U.S. Department of Defense.