The Human Factor Could Be Derailing RFID
Written by Evan SchumanDecember 14th, 2007
Retail IT leaders today are still struggling with RFID, to find a way to salvage years of effort and to try and eek out some provable profits.
Is the human factor to blame? Managers "are going to have to build dependence on RFID. Instead of routing through styles of slacks, will they trust it? It's going to take a lot more than technology. People are going to have to change the way they work."
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2 Comments | Read The Human Factor Could Be Derailing RFID
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-Christine
December 17th, 2007 at 10:12 am
The reason passive RFID failed in the supply chain is due to the fact that pilot after pilot could not produce a read rate greater than 80%. A positive ROI for passive tag RFID depends in achieving full automation, “The Internet of Things”. With a read rate of 80% or less, full automation is impossible. Improving the read rate above 80% is not possible without violating the laws of Physics.
The human factor is not to blame. the more experience companies get with passive-level RFID the more they recognize, and are forced to accept, its limitations.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:47 am
The problems with RFID extend far beyond the human factors noted in this post, though it is crucial to deal with these factors. Much of the claimed benefit from RFID can be captured without RFID using existing barcode scanning technologies. Existing technologies face the same problems with human factors. Better to address the human factors without spending millions on RFID. But also, recognize that the resistance to adoption of existing technologies reflects shortcomings in the solutions that RFID does not address. Namely, the failure to provide intuitive, easy to execute, error correction features. Today’s barcode scanning based inventory systems have higher scan accuracy rates than RFID, yet still lead to inventory integrity problems because of errors, short-cuts, and mis-labeled product. When we solve the known problems with existing inventory management systems, then we’ll know whether RFID offers additional benefit or is just a whiz-bang technology in search of a use.