RFID and EPCglobal Network

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is a technology that has been around for the past 50 years or more and has been used for a wide range of applications, from military to electronic toll collection. For many Malaysians, especially those around Klang Valley, RFID technology has been widely used in our daily life with the introduction of the Touch ‘n Go payment system for our light rail transit, LRT and toll collections. Even our passports and national identity cards have RFID technology embeded.

Briefly speaking, RFID works by transmitting radio frequency from an antenna (transceiver) which would be picked up by a RFID tag. The tag would then use the energy pulses from the radio frequency to return the information stored on the tag to the antenna. The information stored in the tag forms the basis of identification in a RFID system.

Today, RFID is slowly making its way into our supply chain to improve the tracking and identification of items. Currently, the bar code is the de factor used for supply chain management. The growing popularity of RFID technology is mainly due to its ability to overcome the limitations of the bar code, such as the need for line-of-sight scanning. The EPCglobal Network is a framework that would steer the adoption and use of RFID in our supply chain that would one day replace the UPC (Universal Product Code) used in today’s bar codes.

The EPCglobal Network is a framework that enables immediate, automatic identification and sharing of information on items in the supply chain, In that way, the EPCglobal Network will make organisations more effective by enabling true visibility of information about items in the supply chain.
- EPCglobal Inc.

The fundamental element of an EPCglobal Network is the EPC (Electronic Product Code) embeded in the RFID tags that works very much the same as the UPC for bar codes. The EPC consist of a 64-bits or 96-bits of encoded binary data. There are several types of EPC encoding schemes used, most of these encodings are mainly an extension of the UPC or encoding schemes used by various industries to track items in their existing supply chain.

EPCglobal Network Simplified Block Diagram

The Electronic Product Code, EPC would then be decoded by the EPC Middleware to provide real-time events and information in the supply chain. The middleware would also communicates with the EPC Information Services, EPCIS to obtain the relevant information of a particular EPC from the relevant trading partners in the EPCglobal Network. The EPCIS would also form the basis of an user interface for the system and an enterprise level management system to perform ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and WMS (Warehouse Management System).

The communication between EPCIS systems in an EPCglobal Network is establish using a discovery service known as the Object Name Service, ONS which is very similar to the Domain Name Service, DNS used in the Internet. The discovery service enables most of the communication between partner’s systems to be automated using web services to improve the overall supply chain management.

There are already a couple of companies and retailers using such RFID system in their supply chain today. In a couple of years time, the use of RFID in our supply chain would someday be as widespread as the bar codes. Currently, the cost of implementing RFID systems in a supply chain is rather expensive (approx. US$1 per tag) and may not provide a reasonable return on investment (ROI) for many companies to take the leap. However, the cost of such system would soon drop to just a few cents in the near future to make the use of such RFID systems in a supply chain and its benefits justified.

Note: The information regarding RFID and EPCglobal Network is a summarized version of my undergraduate final year project with the general public as the main target audience. Technical and confidential details have been removed due to confidentiality terms with EPCglobal Inc. when conducting my final year project. Information conveyed is to my best understanding with the working drafts and proposed standards from EPCglobal and may have been updated since the completion of my project.