TALKING BUSINESS

Logistics Asia, 1/3/2008

So you have your readers, you have your tags, but how are you going translate all this new data into useful business information? According to CHRIS SHARP, Microsoft has a good solution.

After many years of unfulfilled promises and hype, RFID has reached a significant turning point. For many companies in the manufacturing and retail industry today, the business benefits of radio frequency identification technology are compelling: increased operational efficiency; total supply chain visibility; better asset tracking to help reduce internal theft and tampering; and enabling better processes forproduct status verification.

However, as convincing as the benefits of a fully realized RFID solution are, end-users, application developers, systems integrators, and device manufacturers continue to experience many obstacles to development and adoption. Apart from the cost of hardware like tags and readers – especially in Asia where manufacturers face significant price pressure and margin squeeze – the common challenges include configuring and managing a multitude of incompatible devices, and difficulty in building meaningful applications and integrating them with back-end systems.

The big question for those looking to get integrate RFID technology into their business therefore is, how can companies use software operating systems to transform raw tag read events into useful business information via a rich, scalable event processing infrastructure?

CHIPPING AT THE CHALLENGES
Depending on the needs of the organization, systems integrators and application developers can create a host of business applications in the areas of asset tracking, inventory management, order management, vehicle and fleet management – essentially anything that improves supply chain visibility.

However, unless all users are able to incorporate RFID into their existing applications and workflows, simply and easily, an RFID infrastructure becomes little but a high-tech tagging system. In fact, in a recent research study by Aberdeen Group, 62 percent of respondents cited data integration as their chief cost concern regarding RFID.

However, now, development efforts by Microsoft have resulted in an RFID platform that can be used to enable a manufacturing facility to add tags to cases, adjust inventory and production data, prepare shipping notices and generate purchase order status reports.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, built on Microsoft .NET architecture, allows developers to build applications to read valuable RFID data without reinventing the wheel. The natural language interface of such a system also means users can go into their Outlook inbox and simply click some boxes to make rule changes instead of going back into the application to write new code.

Such a platform provides users with the ability to gain tracking and alerting functionality, process or translate documents, and manage processes from end-toend including orders coming in and dispatch advices going out. Such a system also grants users an additional level of flexibility because the system can work seamlessly, and in many cases automatically, with minimal modifications required.

In this way, they can reduce human error in data collection, reduce inventories and improve product availability, while at the same time respecting the privacy expectations and concerns around the use of RFID technology.

SHOP FLOOR TO TOP FLOOR
In the beginning, organizations used RFID purely as a means to track their inventory for internal purposes. While the ability to track pallets of goods is still an important use for RFID, enterprises are realizing that they can provide rich and meaningful data to gather other types of information about the business. In fact, the technology is evolving into one that generates real-time accurate information from the “edges” of corporate networks.

This information can be used to detect problems, react to changes and refine business processes. For example, customers stand to gain by connecting the data from their RFID infrastructure into their Business Intelligence system, such as the SQL Server Business Intelligence framework, to analyze a variety of business metrics.

With this information, organizations can more easily determine how much inventory they are holding on a month-tomonth basis or analyze out-ofstock trends. This type of business intelligence information can provide a substantial benefit for an organization deploying RFID.

Alternatively, when tightly integrated with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, companies can incorporate RFID data to further automate and streamline internal processes.

Because the business rules editor that sits in that RFID Server correlates the data from the different readers within the plant, users have visibility into their products in the supply chain making it easier for them to then bring the data back into the core of the enterprise to their ERPsystems.

A warehouse worker, for example, might consult a handheld RFID scanner to both receive the list orders he is assigned to fill that day and find the products needed to satisfy each picklist. As each item is scanned, the data is sent back to the ERP and warehouse management systems (WMS), all through the RFID infrastructure.

All in all, this data can prove invaluable to management looking to address challenges such as the accelerating pace of business, increasing supply chain complexity, the need to optimize labour and control costs, and compliance with customer and regulatory requirements.

PLUG-AND-PLAY
Realizing the full potential of RFID is all about simplifying the interoperability between systems within the organization and extending these out to the edge of the enterprise. It requires a common set of tools and a framework that partners and end-users can use to build the solutions that improve business processes – solutions like inventory management and asset tracking.

For example, recycling and packaging company Visy, one of the early adopters of RFID technology, decided to take down all the barriers to RFID adoption by deploying Microsoft BizTalk Server. As a result, the company has been able to decrease costs in the ordering process, and rapidly develop solutions with customers for electronic ordering. The system also enables them to offer more to their trading partners.

But at the end of the day, what users want is simplicity. Just like a mouse that can be connected to any computer and expected to work, at Microsoft, we are providing companies on the Windows platform with this the same plug-and-play functionality in their RFID system and devices.

Only by adopting a software operating systems and processing infrastructure that can turn raw data into meaningful business information via a rich, scalable event processing infrastructure will we be able to bring RFID out of niche status and into the mainstream.

Chris Sharp

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006