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The End of the Bar Code
valdean writes "The University of Wisconsin RFID Lab, principally funded by a dozen Wal-mart suppliers including 3M, Kraft Foods, and S.C. Johnson & Son, believes that RFID could spell the end of the ubiquitous bar code. The big draw? Speeding up supply-chain management. Wal-mart's warehouse conveyor belts presently move products at 600 feet per minute... but they want to be faster. And better informed."
I don't know about the article, but that's the same summary that's accompanied every RFID story for the past 3 years.
I hope that means someone will release a low cost tcp/ip enabled RFID reader, suitable for home/small business use.
Knowing what's in one's cupboards might be useful. Be great if the best before date is encoded as part of the sequence.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
For example, if I'm writing a registration program, it is trivially easy to create a bar code on the registrant's invoice that they then print and bring to the event. Until that magical RFID printer is developed and marketed, I don't see Bar Codes going away.
Also, that bar code on all those pieces of snail mail ("postnet") will not be replaced any time soon.
Yeah, right.
In the UK the supermarket giant Sainsbury had problems with their stock in warehouses after barcode scanning software turned out to be less than reliable. Cages of goods were going into their warehouses and literally getting lost as no one knew they were there. Lots of fresh produce was going to waste and shelves were suspiciously empty as a result.
And meanwhile their main rival Tesco were busy building up a large market lead...
An RFID lab funded by huge companies thinks RFID will do away with barcode? No shit!
A basic printer and barcode scanner can still be had for under $500. You can print as many barcodes as you want - your only limits are paper and toner.
An RFID reader (the kind you would need for warehousing applications) will cost several thousand dollars, and each RFID chip will cost a dollar at the very least. Then, if you want active chips (so you don't have to be within feet of the item), you'll have to pay $20-ish on volume.
Such a reader would also probably enable you to read what's in your neighbour's cupboard as well.
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There is very little value-added by RFID on individual product packages, considering the costs involved. A bar-code is essentially free, while they're going to be hard-pressed to make a RFID tag under $0.10. So they might be useful for large palettes and such, there's just no clear advantage over a regular barcode.
And what's this nonsense about barcodes and speed concerns? 600ft/minute is nothing. Standard barcode readers can easily do 700 scans/sec.. So these scanners could handle speeds of 3500 ft/minute.
RFID can be advantageous to suuply-chain and distribution management, but there are still several problems that need to be addressed before the bar code will die out.
Standards -- For one thing, there are many different standards (the US & Europe, for example, use different frequencies). Increased globalization of supply chains will make this a royal PITA, and probably not cost-effective, for many retailers.
RFID signals are easily blocked -- often accidentally. Soda Cans, for example, can interfere with RFID to such an extent that only tags on the outside of a pallet will be read.
Developing technology -- as RFID tech becomes more advanced, new capabilities will be put into play, and a lot of these may require software and hardware upgrades both for the tags and the readers. This, of course, can be expensive.
Unreliability -- while bar codes are relatively exensive to use (since they require active scanning within line-of-sight), they are very accurate. RFID tags have a misidentification rate that is higher, and can be compounded by improper placement of the scanned goods, or many other causes (like cell phone and walkie-talkie usage).
IMO, bar codes will be around for a very long while. Sure, Walmart will use RFID for supply-chain management. But, the real reason they are implementing it is:
RFID can be used to track consumers inside a store.
Better product placement, better loss prevention, better tracking of purchases.
Only the plus side, RFID is blocked by tinfoil hats.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Technology isn't the cause of human strife or prosperity; humans and how they use it are.
Wal*Mart speeding up their lines is a move to provide more production per unit investment. It's motivated by profit, plain and simple. (Not that it's a bad thing.) Now, if they passed these benefits along to the public, either through paying their employees more or hiring more people, that would be a good thing. The greatest benefit for the most people. If they used it to eliminate workers and pay their shareholders and executives more, that would be a bad thing, since it benefits the fewest number of people.
I don't want to get into a debate about trickle-down economics. I'm just trying to make the point that this isn't a good or bad thing. What we make of it is how we'll be judged by history.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
So we don't have to "deal with" the cashiers at a store? We're eliminating the need for human contact .
So... do you use ATM machines, or visit the delightfully human tellers every time you wish to deposit or withdraw cash?
I remember when ATM cards were introduced. There were a lot of people then, just like you, wailing and gnashing teeth over how we were de-humanizing our lives, how people were being replaced by robots, etc. etc. We marveled and whispered every time one of dem new-fangled ATM machines popped up on a nearby street corner. Coupla generations later and, what? We wonder how we ever got through life without cash-on-demand boxes.
Lines -- queues -- are inherently bad. Nobody wants to be on a line. It's got nothing to do with human interaction (If any of your meaningful human interaction occurs on a cashier's line you need to be placed on your local constabulary's 'Watch List.') Anything that eliminates or reduces lines is good.
Or by lowering prices, which is exactly what they will do, and which is the course of action that benefits the most people.
What does this mean for barcodes? Their "death" is nowhere near imminent. I work in the packaging industry and applications for barcode readers are as prevalent as ever.
"Bar codes" aren't just the UPC codes you see at the store when you checkout. There are a lot of different codes out there--I2of5, pharmacode, EAN, code128, codabar, etc. There are a lot of Fortune 500 companies that have invested a lot of money on systems to print and read these codes, and that process isn't going to go away anytime soon. There are pharmaceutical companies that need to have zero per million defects. That's not going to happen with RFID in the near future.
RFID chips (and readers) still have too many problems with reliable reading to use them in the industry where barcodes are currently used.
(I'm sure it's much lower these days, but I was in a plant a few years ago that laid down RFID tags in boxes on a folder-gluer. Did you know that if the carton is produced on a very humid day at the plant the failure rate of RIFD tags can be up to 10%?)
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So the sellers are limiting supply to try to get a better price. They are free to do that. If I have widgets to sell and the market is glutted with cheap widgets I don't have to sell them - I can store them away and wait for better conditions. That's how self-correcting supply/demain is.
What the g-parent is saying that you don't necessarily have to pass off cost-savings to your customers. In fact, any business would love to cut their cost of production or labor but still charge the same prices, thereby getting a bigger profit margin. That's also why business loves to have a patented method of reducing costs that only they can use so a competitor won't come in and undercut their price and squeeze their nice fat profit margin.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"Now, if they passed these benefits along to the public, either through paying their employees more or hiring more people, that would be a good thing."
What about charging less to their customers? That's what they do now.
Are you saying they should hire more employees and then give them meaningless, unproductive jobs. That's stupid. If you're saying they should expand their operations (like by offering a wider array of services) that would make sense, they're also doing that. How about if they pay their employees more per hour, but then work them for fewer hours?
"If they used it to eliminate workers and pay their shareholders and executives more, that would be a bad thing, since it benefits the fewest number of people."
That is not true, it depends how many shareholders and how many employees there are. I think I wal-mart's case, many of the employees are shareholders, but they also have a lot of shareholders who are not employees. By the way, executives are workers and their positions are made irrelevant and eliminated by technology just the same as any other employee.
Yours is a typical anti-industrialist argument. Change is bad because it eliminates work. But that assumes that people want to work in the first place. If people wanted to operate a check-out line, you wouldn't have to pay them to do it. So, no it's not bad to get rid of these kind of shitty, meaningless jobs that no one wants.