At the annual Sapics conference, held last week at Sun City, the topic that seemed to be on the tip of every delegate?s tongue was RFID. More to the point, what the technology is all about, and how it could help them better manage the supply chain.

According to Max Stone, country manager for Symbol, more and more delegates are taking an interest in the technology. ?At the past three conferences there has been some interest in RFID, but delegates are becoming more and more interested in the technology, as they learn of the successes that overseas companies are having with it.?

South African companies still have quite a way to go before they can start implementing RFID throughout the supply chain, however. ?Yes, numerous companies have already implemented RFID, but these are typically ?closed-loop? implementations, or implementations that will only work within that company?s warehouse -- this RFID technology will not work with any other company?s technology,? he says.

The reason that this is occurring is because, until recently, there was no standard that RFID vendors could adhere to in order to make sure the tags and readers they manufactured would work across the globe. ?The electronic product code (EPC) global standard, which was introduced earlier this year, has been involved in setting up RFID standards, including frequencies, energy emissions and other logistics related to a global RFID standard.?

?In SA we have numerous other problems that need to be solved before we can implement a globally recognized RFID solution,? he continues. ?The issues around RFID are currently being addressed by Icasa. No-one knows when they will be cleared up, however. We still need some clarity on what standards to follow,? he says.

Since RFID is a wireless technology that operates in the UHF frequency range, manufacturers need to find a frequency that is not being used. ?The ideal frequency is around 900MHz. This is fine for America and Europe, but in SA we have numerous other technologies, such as GSM and television, running on that frequency,? continues Stone.

South African vendors have come up with a solution of operating between the ?guard-bands? which protect cross talk between the technologies running on the various frequencies. ?We have found that we will be able to assign RFID to work between the 915.4 and 921MHz frequency, just next to the frequency that the ?guard-bands? work on,? he adds.

?However, this brings us to another problem, that of bandwidth utilization. When scanning hundreds of products simultaneously the amount of data transferred is phenomenal, and operating between this frequency means that we would have very limited bandwidth -- thus the entire scanning process would be slowed down.?

Stone feels that SA companies will only have a totally transparent RFID solution towards the end of 2009.

He goes on to say that companies that already have some sort of scanning system, and a structured supply chain management system will be the first to benefit from RFID.

?Companies cannot rely on RFID to better organize their supply chain management, but instead should think of it as a technology that will streamline it,? he concludes.