Are RFID Tags Valuable?
Tracking Everything, Everywhere, All The Time
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The value of RFID tags to manufacturers and retailers should be readily apparent. For the manufacturer, it will be possible to monitor where every item is at every moment during the manufacturing process. Powerful computers will be able to provide up-to-the-second reports on what is where and in what stage of creation.
Retailers, however, will probably gain a lot of the immediate benefits. When a shipment arrives at a retail location, someone can simply wave a scanner at the boxes and instantly know what is inside without having to open anything. Even before arrival, it will be possible to know where everything is, thus helping reduce lost shipments (this might also help to reduce lost luggage in airlines, should the carriers decide to use them - which seems likely).
Once on the shelves, retailers may have access to up-to-the-second reports on how much stock they have of every single item, when certain items are too old and need to be removed or sold at clearance, and so on. Theft should be reduced dramatically - not only will authorized removal become more apparent, but stolen items may even have the ability to "report" themselves as stolen as soon as they are hit by an RFID scanner somewhere else.
There are safety issues to consider as well. Aside from the automatic monitoring for expired food, your medicine cabinet might be able to warn you about expired medication. Doctors could even possibly monitor patients to ensure that medication is being taken properly - after all, each individual pill can have it's own unique tag, thus allowing for the tracking of whether it is still in the bottle, was flushed down the toilet, or injested just as you were instructed to do.
All of this is very exciting for both manufacturers and retailers who are working hard towards the adoption of RFID tags across the entire North American continent as soon as possible (and the rest of the world thereafter). WalMart, the store that was instrumental in the widespread adoption of UPC barcodes, is starting to push its suppliers to use RFID tags in all their products by 2005. WalMart is a huge corporation that is always looking for ways to cut costs and increase control over every aspect of the retailing process; they know just how much RFID will be able to help them in those goals.
There can be many conveniences for consumers as well. With RFID tags, people may not need to stop and pay for things anymore - so long as they have an account in the store, scanners can check what they have as they leave and automatically bill them. Your refrigerator can tell you when things are getting low or have expired, perhaps even ordering for you from your favorite grocer. Your television might provide you with special ads that are chosen based upon what types of items already exist in your home, thus allowing you to skip the ads that aren't relevant to your lifestyle.
If something is stolen from you, recovering it should be much easier. The police will be able to obtain the unique ID of whatever is missing (and a quick scan of your home will reveal exactly what is and isn't gone). That can be loaded into a database of stolen goods so that when (not if) it turns up, it can be quickly and easily returned to you with as little hassle as possible. The thief, of course, will have a great deal more difficulty in getting away - suspects' cars and home could be quickly and easily scanned from the outside to check for unauthorized product codes.
Of course, it is unlikely that only the government and retailers will have access to this technology. Clever thieves armed with powerful RFID scanners could conceivably go through a neighborhood (perhaps even during the day), scanning homes to see which ones have the sorts of things they want to steal - and if they can get the items out of the country, it might be a risk worth taking. This, then, brings us to some of the problems associated with the widespread adoption of RFID technology.
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