Perspectives

Le RFID, la panacée pour remédier aux problèmes d'inventaires et de chaînes d'approvisionnement. Fabricants, distributeurs et vendeurs rêvent d'une gestion logistique des produits suivis par puce RFID, de leur conception à leur commercialisation. La complexité d'intégration de cette puce "miracle" est souvent suréstimée.

Today, RFID technology is expanding rapidly, due not only to technological progress in terms of miniaturization of electronic components, but also thanks to the emergence of international norms such as the standards defined by the EPCglobal organization. Current uses are just a tiny proportion of the abundance and diversity of tomorrow’s RFID applications.

Logistics

Global standards under development will allow the benefits of RFID technology to extend beyond the supply chain's local link. Throughout the entire chain – i.e., from the extraction of raw materials to the end-user, including all intermediate transformation, storage and shipping steps – fine-grained item identification will lead to highly accurate and efficient management of the flows of goods.

Traceability

Logistics' operational efficiency objectives correspond to the quality objectives that traceability efforts are aiming for. Integrated through the use of global standards, processes of all members of the food processing chain will become transparent. The ultimate objective – total traceability – will then be within reach, as it becomes possible to trace the ingredients of any food products to their origin accurately. And the food industry is of course not the only one to stand to benefit from these developments: traceability issues are not limited to this industry, and neither are the improvements achievable through RFID technology.

Security

The most significant enhancements as far as security is concerned should probably not be expected in the field of access control, but rather in the prevention of counterfeiting. As a matter of fact, RFID based access control technology, although still likely to grow in terms of market shares, has already reached a certain level of maturity.

Prevention of counterfeiting, however, is still in an emergent phase. RFID tag miniaturization combined with the standardization of secure communication protocols will eventually allow for a wide variety of objects to include anti-counterfeiting RFID markers, ranging from branded goods to identity documents and even – although probably in the more distant future – banknotes.

Added value services

As RFID technology progressively becomes more accessible, it will extend beyond specialized industrial applications to reach a much wider public. After electronic payment systems – highway tolls, passenger tickets, credit cards, etc. – RFID technology is expected to achieve major breakthroughs such as fully automated supermarket checkout and payment systems, for example.

Beyond improvements to existing services, RFID technology's true potential resides in the emergence of entirely novel services that have no equivalent to this day. Many pioneers are already probing the potential of such possibilities. One such innovative service would, for instance, consist in establishing a direct link between an RFID tag and a web page that is composed on the basis of information relative to the tagged object or location (origin, history, description, user manual, etc.). And with the arrival of miniaturized RFID readers – small enough to be embedded in mobile phones, for example – this type of system will eventually break free of any physical bonds, allowing for services that are not only accessible to anyone, but also from anywhere.