Tapping the power of RFID

From left: RFID workgroup member Tony Larsen of Appleton, UWEBC student Chih-Chuan Yen, workgroup member Dave Matthias of Waukesha-based RedPrairie, UWEBC director Raj Veeramani, and Alfonso Gutierrez of UWEBC. (27K JPG)

A recently formed university-industry workgroup and laboratory at the UW-Madison E-Business Consortium (UWEBC) is helping many Wisconsin companies tap the potential of radio-frequency identification (RFID) — a new technology that lets manufacturers write product data to "tags" consisting of a microchip and an antenna. Unlike bar codes, which can be read only one at a time, RFID allows multiple tags to be read at once, even if the tagged products are out of view. "RFID will not only allow companies to manage their inventory better and minimize the total cost in the supply chain, but also ensure that the product availability remains high," says Professor Raj Veeramani, director of the UWEBC.