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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."
Zoom. That's 10 feet per second. Reminds me of the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel were newly employed at a candy factory with them packing boxes while trying to keep pace with the machine producing chocolate candies.
Man, better not blink if you work in a Wal-Mart warehouse...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I like to know if the bar serves alcohol or just wine and beer, whether the waitresses are topless or merely scantily clad, if there's a cover charge (and how much), if there's a band or a lame jukbox, and finally if they have pool tables.
Oh, you mean those thingies with lines? Nevermind.
6.81818... miles per hour. That's a brisk walk.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Things like this are fun to experiment with, and in some applications they're very useful and make people's lives better. But what do we really have to gain by developing RFID in our personal lives? So we don't have to "deal with" the cashiers at a store? We're eliminating the need for human contact .
"... but they want to be faster
" Why do they want to be faster? So they can continue to work a 40-hour week and rush home to...to what? The internet?
Sorry, but my life is too fast-paced as it is, the last thing I need is another thing to expedite my trip through life.
I don't know about the article, but that's the same summary that's accompanied every RFID story for the past 3 years.
To our Slashdot Overlords:
..." section?
Can we get a "The End of
The End of the Bar Code
Yep, the bar code is dead. Right after BSD dies. Should be any day now.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
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
"And better informed."
I went to apply for a walmart credit card whan I was 18 - they already had my information and SSN - I was shocked.
They know too much already!
In other news, the shares of tinfoil makers have increased.
Speaking of which, can you read the price tag on my new hat?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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.
Did anyone else see that commercial a while back that had this guy in a long trenchcoat walking through a supermarket, stuffing things into his coat. He take a whole bunch of stuff and sticks in inside his coat and then walks out, and as he walking out a employee stops him and hands him his receipt for all the stuff he just bought.
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
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.
I'm sure they would still have people working at the store in some capacity, so I think that particular fear is unfounded :)
Personally, I would be glad if these systems were introduced and saved time at stores. To me, spending time at home with my girlfriend and horses is more important than standing in a qeue waiting for a cashier to process everyone's purchases.
Liberal Ontarians and French Quebecers are draining Western Canada's wealth. Stop them now! Support Western separatism.
Bar codes supply other niceties, like when shelves get stocked a little off from the labels on the shelf, or when something gets put back by a consumer, or very similar items are right next to each other. With all of these you can match the bar code up with the code on the label. Hopefully they'll keep something similar around if not used for determining the actual prices.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Bar codes were invented in 1952 but only became really widely used in the last ten years, thanks to ink jet printers and laser scanning at many checkouts. It's going to take RFIDs decades to replace bar codes and probably it won't happen until a RFID chip can be literally micro-printed onto a paper receipt, onto an egg, or onto a newspaper.
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Such a reader would also probably enable you to read what's in your neighbour's cupboard as well.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
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.
This technology isn't going to replace barcodes. Many companies (like UPS or FedEx) would have a difficult time adapting their systems because of the large amounts of accidental "scanning" of RFID tags. If companies can use it effectively, that's great, but for many companies, barcodes are a more ideal solution.
How would they attach tags to things like plastic bags (frozen/fresh veggies) individual pieces of produce (they're now starting to use lasers to etch barcodes onto the skin of fruits), and other small or unusually shaped items? Barcodes can be put on almost anything no matter what the shape or size. Can the same be done with RFID tags?
And what about boxes that have multiple barcodes? Cell phones are one example - they have serial numbers, ESN's, etc. that all need to be scanned at different times for different reasons. How do you do this with RFID? I suppose you could say that the RFID that begins with one prefix is a serial number, with another prefix is an ESN, etc. but then you put a lot more in the way of constraints on the manufactureres, and I doubt they'd like that.
who got a barcode tattoo because they thought it would look cool and anti-corporate are gonna be pissed off!
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
they figure out a way only I can scan my items.
At the moment, barcode scanning is obvious enough that I know when I'm being sized up consumer statistics-wise. RFID could allow the lady at the end of the aisle to scan from a distance, and loudly pronounce that you buy X brand and that Y brand is better - there's no limit or control over who could scan what you have...
Tidbit... I've seen a conveyor belt spin the items slowly to allow the barcode scanner ample time and angles to read every item.
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
There are many limits to RFID -- for example, how well do those thing withstand extreme cold? I'd like to use them for Artificial Insemination samples in our labs, but I just don't think those things would work too well at temperatures approaching absolute zero. Even if they did, you'd still have to open the insulated containers to get a signal since they are line of sight. I doubt they would work to well in meat or frozen foods either or anything shipped in winter.
Moreover, their biggest limitiation is bad data design. For example that chip Tommy Thompson seems to be backing away from inserting... I heard on Wisconsin Public radio it only gives a unique 8 digit identifier to be entered into a website to obtain the medical info. A number that small wouldn't come close to being able to give a unique number to the US population let alone the world's -- it seems like it would be too easy to get the wrong info on someone, let alone be able to wardial the database for fun and profit.
RFID seems to be a great way to manage drygoods, but medical applications can be dangerous. What do you do if the chip gets lost in the body as frequently happens with dogs? Even worse, what do you do with the thing when you get an MRI? Would it rocket out of your body to the strong magnet?
I think down the road there will be many useful applications, but we are still trying to figure out how to do simple things with them -- which is why Walmart's deadline to have everything RFID is long gone and forgotten as even the big players are trying to figure out how to get the things to work. Ethical concerns aside, the technology is still too new to be reliable but it does show promise.
I dont know about you, but over here ( Estonia ) we can for example purchase movie theatre tickets online and print them anywhere. The very same barcode-carrying tickets lets you in through the gates in cinema. How's RFID going to replace so simple and cheap system ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
If they can use item-level RFIDs to do inventory management, then so can you. Think of being able to quickly determine a "household manifest" of your consumables, compare that against a desired manifest of what you would like to have when the household is fully stocked, and generate a grocery list instantly. What has really held back the would-be Amazons of the grocery business is that the consumer doesn't know what they want until they see it on the shelf, and sometimes not even then. The supermarket managers do know what the consumer wants, but only in aggregate. So there's this big information crisis between the wholesale level and the items on your shelves, and this information crisis is why the markup at the retail level is a signifcant fraction of the final consumer cost: it pays for people to nicely array the items on shelves, for the parking lots and big wide aisles where your car and you have to sit while you make up your mind as to whether you want something or not, all because there is no better way to determine whether you want something than having you look at it and make the decision. When the price of RFID technology gets down to the point of practicability for this, the smart entrepreneur is going to give away the scanner, becasue the cost and convenience advantages of being automatically inventory your house and order replacements will be self-evident. Heck, when the adoption rate gets high enough, it is self-apparently more efficient for a delivery vehicle to go through neighborhoods than for each household to send a representative to a centralized location.
Will we be taping the chip to the form instead of the bar code?
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.
man... I used to work at SCM plant that dealt with Ontario Canada, yes that is correct, one location handled every Wal-Mart in Ontario. That place was ridiculously fast, thousands of boxes were running on Km's and Km's track in the ceiling. It was quite the experience just touring around checking out how boxes were tracked with their barcodes and then kicked off onto correct ramps to corresponding waiting trucks for a specific location. Now they intend to make it even more efficient and faster... wow..
If only they could put half of the engineering they put into that plant into every Wal-Mart so checkout lines would disappear. Something like the self checkout at Loblaws combined with this RFID would be very sweet. Walk through a sensor and swipe my credit card and then off to the car in seconds...
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
Bar codes are often used to track documents and forms in large companies, organizations, government agencies, and so on. I don't think placing a RFID chip on every sheet of paper that has to be tracked is a practical solution, to say the least. RFID is great for bulky things and will no doubt replace the bar code for tracking packages, shipments, and things placed on top of other things, but I this is hardly the death of bar codes.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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%?)
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Here in Japan I have been surprised by massification in the use of bar-codes that can be read by the cell phones( Services in phones by docomo). They put this codes basically everywhere ( posters , web pages , products ) , and people can recover information from them with their cell phones . For example, in a poster from a cinema they put a web adress in this codes and people makes use of the camera in the phone to retrieve the web adress of the cinema from it and check for the schedules of the cinema. Some telephones as well have the capabilitiy to create bar codes , that can be displayed on the LCD of the phone and read by other phones. But, as I say , here is Japan and japanese people sometimes has trends that dont leave the island.
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." -- Linus
Speeding up the conveyor belts in Walmart's warehouses doesn't mean every box of Kraft Mac & Cheese would have RFID. Only the big brown box containing them. All the consumer products in the big boxes won't have them.
I don't think all the references to how you'll get scanned out of the grocery store faster don't apply.
GreasyBloater
With RFID, there is the possibly of doing entire cart checkouts. Roll the cart into the scanning area, it gets all the RFID info, gives a total and you pay for your items. No need to remove everything from the cart.
Of course, this means that you likely want to bag the items as you shop instead of afterwards.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The checkout of the future will be accomplished by the simple act of walking through the door. The door will be smart enough to read the tags on everything in your cart and then charge your credit card straight from your back pocket. The credit companies will even share your personal information for you so that the store can pick out the best card to use (if you have more than one). Isn't that nice of them?
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.-Asimov
In a stark contrast to the warehouse's conveyor belt speed of 600 feet per minute, the store checkout speed is 6 customers per hour.
Barcodes work great on individual items. There's already loss prevention systems using some kind of RFID for tracking those really expensive/high profit margin retail items.
It's further up the supply chain when you've got a pallet with maybe 50 cases on it. Barcode doesn't work very well because:
1. You have to trust the person creating the pallet's barcode. There is no incentive for walmart to pay an employee more for that trust, so they want a computer instead.
2. The 50 case pallet needs RFID to accurately report what's on the pallet. If a case or two might "fall off" a barcoded pallet then the barcode is none the wiser. In theory RFID would report the entire contents of the pallet as it's passing through the door.
The problems:
A. Cost. Barcodes got RFID beat hands down.
B. Accuracy. An RFID chip can't communicate through many layers of cardboard/product/cardboard so a pallet with boxes on the inside bottom do not get reported. If you want to be a millionaire, patent an amplifier/antenna that can be sprayed onto a paper tube and dropped down the center of a pallet of goods to get those inside boxes to accurately report. Now, if you don't pay me for this great idea, I'll unleash my submarine patent on you.
In this application it's not so much what's on the retail floor they're so concerned about it's keeping accurate track of goods at a logistics/warehouse level.
I gotta stop ordering double-espresso.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"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.
I heard about this while talking with a guy who deals with warehousing systems for a local supermarket chain.
It is a misconception that this is for use within the retail stores. In reality this is for use within the warehouses that supply the retail stores. I blame the reporter for making the assumption, and to a lesser extent the summary for running with the bait.
RFID is still too expensive to be placed within each individual package of Ramen noodles. It won't replace bar codes on the packages bought by consumers, but it is already replacing bar codes within the distribution centers.
In other words, each crate of Doritos will have an RFID chip that identifies the product. This is useful within the warehouse, as the warehouse deals with crates of product, not with individual packages of Charmin. You'll still see bar codes on products you buy.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Entire cart checkouts, you say? In reality, the checkout monkey will have to dig through all your crap to verify that the RFID worked, and half of the items won't be tagged right, or have failed RFIDs, or be blocked by your big can o' coffee. Then you get to wait until the manager shows up to approve the variance, and then the computer, scanner, or any other component fails (as it must), and soon the checkout line lies fallow along with the "self checkout" lines which I seldom see operating nowadays.
Technology is not your friend, people. Luckily, the impending economic collapse of the US a la Argentina in any given decade will spell the end of this silliness. We'll all be sewing clothes for the Chinese and too busy/poor to actually purchase anything.