On RFID - part 4

Day two

Governance of Resources
Bernard Benhamou from the Political Science Institute of Paris presented a "European governance perspective on the ONS". As ONS relies on DNS, the US governance dominance of DNS raises sovereignty issues for other countries. Mr. Benhamou would prefer a multi-lateral, democratic alternative. Mr. Lathia, from the audience, added that the DNS root is comparable to atomic weapons: just having them causes tensions.

Chris Adcock from EPCglobal presented a user-driven perspective to standardization. First he characterized EPCglobal has a neutral, not-for-profit organization with a board of governors composed of 19 individuals representing multiple companies, 9 nationalities (recently including China) and about 100 work groups on standards. The current key challenge of EPCglobal is driving adoption and implementation. EPCglobal's view is that standards govern interfaces, not implementations. EPC standards can be classified in three categories: physical object exchange (air interface protocols), infrastructure (reader protocol, reader management, filtering & collection) and (ALE) and data exchange (enables discovery and sharing of business information, with security authorization, authentication and entitlement mechanisms). The exchange data are EPC events that contain: what, where (location), when (time), why (business process step). ONS is a look-up service and a directory of EPC manager members. Many ONS can coexist as long as they interoperate (entails some redundancy and additional costs). Answering an audience question, he stated that EPCIS doesn't require ONS.

Kiritkumar Lathia from ICT Standards Board and Nokia-Siemens networks presented "Data governance - building trust". In his opinion the fundamental problem is whom to trust in RFID data governance and the common sense solution is that proportionality is needed. The issue is complicated by cultural differences: regional (USA "let the market decide!" vs Europe/Asia "government as caretaker/protector"), generational (young people are less concerned and more willing to use) and conceptual (e.g. privacy in anglo-saxon "My home is my castle" and continental Germany in 1983 "The individual has the right to disclose or not his/her data". In Mr. Lathia's opinion, we standards for simpler, consistent and transparent data manipulation; the disclose policy is a successful approach in applications like Facebook (ex. share this data with everyone/friends/...). As a final note, Mr. Lathia added that all these issues are relevant not just because of RFID, as all information and communication technology means more data sharing and capture issues.

Walter Weigel from ETSI presented a view on "Standards - Europe and beyond". Beyond its success stories - GSM, 3G, DECT, DUB, TETRA - ETSI is expanding its surround services with a center for testing and interoperability and several PlugTests, e.g. 2nd RFID PlugTest in 2008. Mr. Weigel stated emphatically that ETSI is a must consult body, as ESO compliance is required for mentioning technologies in European directives.

Barcode's 30th anniversary
In a short ceremony, a representative of GS1 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the barcode, stating its key features as being simplicity and low-cost. According to estimates, 6% of current product prices is saved by barcodes.

Mobilizing Ideas
Carlos Zorrinho from the Portuguese Government technological plan started the session highlighting the relationship between ideas, economic growth and jobs.

Then Alves Marques introduced the session talking about the importance of lighthouse projects to know where the technology is going and how to materialize the return-on-investment (ROI). In his view, we only really learn by doing.

The first idea was presented by Elena Siri from Instituto Tumori, Milan, Italy and focused on "Blood transfusion". The project's main concerns are patient safety and the auditing of blood transfusion processes. The goals are traceability, monitoring and timely and complete communication. The first results are promising and the project will be extended to hospitals soon.

Markus Kuhn from IML Fraunhofer, Germany, presented "Components labeling for the automotive industry" with the idea of reusing spare parts in new cars. The component's lifecycle would span production, maintenance, disassembly, reconditioning, re-use. Barcodes are not suitable for this application because their resistance is insufficient. The main challenges are: part identification standard for automotive industry; universal database for different OEMs and suppliers; finding suitable tags for the application.

Octávio Lopes from IBERLOG, Portugal, presented HubNet's new logistic concepts. The idea is to make savings in traffic, inventory and delivery time with Hubs - automatic warehouses - where goods can find their way to where they are needed.

Finally, Miguel Ferrinho from Grupo Portucel Soporcel, Portugal, presented WSCOPPI (Wood Supply Chain Optimization of Pulp and Paper Industry) with the goals of automation and optimization to provide traceability from forest to final product with interoperability. A prototype will be developed, for instance, to clarify the different requirements in RFID for tree identification and RFID for wood traceability.


Closing session

(to be continued)