RFID: THE WORLD’S NEW “DUCT TAPE”?

If you’re like me, you’ve used duct tape for just about every purpose, from fixing a broken PVC pipe to patching a hole in your tennis shoe when in a tight fix.  Duct tape, which was invented during World War II for use on the battlefield, can even save lives by serving as a temporary tourniquet to mitigate blood loss.

Now, with new and more creative uses for RFID emerging every day, I am beginning to see parallels between RFID technology and that ubiquitous, hardworking roll of duct tape I keep handy.

As one of the first to develop RFID solutions specifically for the retail industry, my company, Truecount, still maintains a strong focus on the RFID for Retail arena.  At the same time, we continue innovating and implementing new RFID solutions for healthcare, hospitality, professional sports and event merchandisers.   In fact, the next time you attend a Phish concert, check out how efficiently the Waterwheel Foundation handles their Phish-branded merchandise using our RFID systems.

At many concerts, RFID-enhanced bracelets have replaced tickets and ticket stubs for monitoring entry and re-entry into the venue. Today, RFID technology is ending the long lines at Disney theme parks and serving as entry ticket, e-wallet and social media communicator at high-end clubs around the globe. A club in Barcelona, Spain, for example, was the first to inject their VIP customers with tiny RFID tags (about the size of a grain of rice) linked to their debit accounts.  A wave of the wrist and the tab gets paid.

At Vail Resorts in Colorado, RFID powered lift tickets and gantries track a skier’s run speeds as well as the number of lift rides, the number of ski days and more.  Skiers can choose to share this information with their friends on Facebook or Twitter.  One of the beauties of RFID is its ability to seamlessly connect people, places and things in the virtual social media world with people, places and things in the physical world.  As these two worlds converge, we are fast moving towards a totally connected universe–The Internet of Everything (or “IoE”)—where people, animals, plants, data, processes and things are all intricately connected and able to “communicate” via technologies such as NFC (Near Field Communication), barcodes, QR codes and most importantly, RFID.

Here’s a sampling from around the world of ways that RFID is currently being used to keep things connected, and interacting:

• In Japan, the city of Tokyo has plans to “blanket itself” with microchips. Everything from restaurants to bus stops will have chips. Tourists should be able to get maps or bus schedules and pay for meals (even leave the tip) with a wave of their cell phone.
• In Britain, where overcrowding of prisons has forced the release of inmates, the country wants to embed RFID chips into the freed prisoners in order to track their movements and activities.
• In India, the New Delhi forestry department is placing chips in elephants in order to prevent trafficking in the animals, or their valuable tusks.
• In Mexico, a nation where 6,500 people were kidnapped last year, one security firm is using GPS chips to track people who might be targets of this crime.
• In Arizona, Saguaro National Park plans to use RFID to prevent theft of Saguaro cactus, a “hot” target of theft for resale on the Black Market for landscaping.
• Everywhere, medical facilities are placing RFID in sponges and other surgical supplies in order to track these items during surgery.  An estimated one out of every one thousand patients ends up with a sponge left in their body following surgery. The so-called “smart sponge” will end those—and other—medical accidents.

According to network giant Cisco Systems, there are more “things” connected to the internet at this moment than there are people in the world.  You and I and everyone we know are living the next evolution of connectivity.  And the “duct tape” that will be critical in the future for holding things together, for ensuring “things” can talk to each other as well as to people, for making the IoE function effortlessly, with precision and in “real time”, will be RFID.

How are you applying RFID to make things work more efficiently within your organization or personal life?  Truecount would like to know.  Leave a comment here, or email us at success@truecount.com. And hold onto your seat!  The ride towards the IoE is going to be exciting—and fast.