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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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
Harald
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?
No, and it won't. Because that's not the target, I think. Cheap items, small pieces will still carry the barcode, at least in the next years. RFID will take over in warehouses (useful in tracking a pallet of bags) and in high added value objects (think about a sweater that interacts with your washing machine).
And what about boxes that have multiple barcodes?
The RFID broadcasts a signal, is up to the operator (or the receiver) to decode the signal and pick the important part of the message.
I know some RFID implementations in the food supply. Each different operator needs differen type of informations (the producer needs warehouse informations, the distributor needs the destination address, the customer needs expiry date and storage conditions). All these info can be stored on a single RFID. Each element of the chain can catch the signal and get his info.
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
6.8 would be a light jog.
600 ft/min is just over an 8 minute mile. I'd be amazed if most slashdotters could do that.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
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.
Bad metric. How many Slashdotters can walk a mile at all?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"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.