Early adopter Gillette orders 500 million chips, but moves ahead cautiously.
The worldwide leader in razor blades says射频识别will keep it a cut above the competition.
"We call it perfect retail," says Jamshed Dubash, Gillette's director of auto-ID technology. "It's having the right product at the right place at the right time."
当然，它仍然是在这一点上的梦想。能够跟踪个人消费品仍是多少年后，通过青少年的技术和成本高在海湾举行。但对于吉列，从配送中心到零售接收码头跟踪刀片的情况下，尽快将偏离试点阶段的限制范围的现实。
即使在情况下,经济利益enormous. Discrepancies between invoices and actual inventory received by a retailer can be eliminated. Human miscounts won't occur. Pallets of merchandise will no longer get lost in cavernous warehouses. With implementation of RFID by trucking companies, tracking inventory throughout the supply chain and minimizing theft of in-transit goods becomes possible.
“最终，我们将有透明度的一个新的水平，”全球对外关系的吉列公司的总监Paul福克斯说。“我们不会看到不少端到端的，但我们会从我们的生产车间看到到零售商的里屋。”
吉列小心移动，找出最好的地方贴上标签，最大限度地提高读取率，越来越多的供应商一起工作，并修改系统利用所收集的数据。
它的进展缓慢，远不同的情景不是一个设想的谁被报道解雇了RFID的支持者吉列曾在2003年1月下令从Alien技术公司5组亿的标签。
"Our agreement with Alien gave us the option to purchase up to half-billion tags," Fox says. "We have not done this."
Alien spokesman Tom Pounds concurs: "I can tell you that Gillette has taken delivery of more than 20,000 tags; they have not moved too far into the larger commitment."
On board early
但吉列公司长期以来一直致力于RFID硬件技术和电子产品代码（EPC）数据 - 电子条码 - 即每一个微小的标签来承载。1999年，该公司是技术公司的Auto-ID中心的麻省理工学院，这奠定了当今产品的技术基础学术研究工作的创始成员之一。
通过早期建立其参与，吉列成为一个关键球员，现在正在与主要零售商，包括沃尔玛和英国的特易购，就如何数据和流程共享的标准和协议。通过查看自己的配送中心和IT能力作为一套小，可重复使用的乐高积木块样模块，吉列已经能够将工作与各种技术合作伙伴，每一个提供的专业知识在不同的区域。
“你不会想进入的情况下一个供应商使然，” Dubash说。“如果你的模块化接口，你应该能够在整个链的任何环节使用任何供应商。”
吉列公司面临的主要挑战是设计长期的解决方案，可扩展到大规模生产水平，并专注于一系列不同的软件和硬件接口。“一旦你做到这一点，那么它不会不管你使用哪一家厂商，” Dubash说。
该公司正是这样做的。从外国人的RFID标签是由外国人和泰科消防安保公司的Sensormatic部门设备读取。
Middlewarefrom Oat Systems integrates with the readers, filtering and aggregating data for use by warehouse management software from Provia. The intent is to create an "appliance," a combination of fundamental electromechanical components (conveyors, shrink-wrap machines) and RFID components (readers and software) that can be deployed quickly and supported by one vendor.
这并不容易。虽然吉列从一开始就打算使用外部供应商，它很快就发现，场外的现成解决方案是不存在的。修改为继续进行，而不是由吉列。“的Provia使得改进和修改自己的产品，” Dubash说。这对每一个合作伙伴如此。
At its cavernous Devens, Mass., assembly and distribution center, Gillette is running one production line, affixing RFID tags to cases and pallets of its Venus women's razor cartridge, one product with seven different stock-keeping units. Dubash says the idea is to track both homogeneous and mixed pallets as they ship out the door. "We're studying fundamentals, how to apply a tag and how to read it in a dense population, for example."
That's a smart move, says Jack Grasso of EPCglobal, the international standards-setting trade group. "There are inherent physical limitations with these tags: They are not easily read through metal or foil packaging or at great distances. Companies that move early to solve these assembly-line challenges will get higher readability levels and greater payback."
Dubash agrees. To assume that all cases on a pallet will be read all the time is "flawed thinking." He suggests the probability of reading each case on a loaded pallet is extremely low. "You can complain about it or accept it," he says.
At the other end of the pipeline, Gillette is one of eight suppliers assisting Wal-Mart with field trials in several Texas stores. Pallets, tagged at the case level, arrive along with merchandise from Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and others.
Although Wal-Mart continues to pressure its suppliers to move their RFID programs from pilot to production in 2005, not all will be ready. Will Gillette? Dubash declined to provide specifics, saying that the company continues to learn from its efforts.
成功的代价
RFIDtraces its roots back to "Communication by Means of Reflected Power," a 1948 research paper authored by a visionary Harry Stockman for the Institute of Radio Engineers (which became the IEEE in 1963). His ideas were first used in a rudimentary 1950s "friend or foe" aircraft identification system. In the 1970s, RFID kept track of railroad freight cars, something it couldn't do with large bar codes painted on each car. Today, the technology is most often seen in the windshield transponders that drivers use on toll roads. As the decades passed, the technology shrunk and reliability grew.
，然后望而却步的成本，仍然是一个障碍，但不是在那里你会觉得。虽然标签仍然挺高的，只是最近刚打破了20美分的屏障，这是他们固定到商品是居高不下的成本的情况下。
并不令人惊奇,克里斯汀Spivey结束by, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. She projects that a hypothetical manufacturer, manually tagging about 15 million cases per year, would spend more than $5 million in its first year of RFID deployment, including $3 million for tags costing 20 cents apiece and more than $2 million in development costs. Manual "slap and ship" tagging adds another $469,000 in labor costs.
EPCglobal的格拉索承认，标签和阅读器的成本仍然阻碍广泛实施。“这将最终改变，更多的领导人出现，”他说。
而这已经是。在八月，外国人开始制作标签采用了全新的“流体自装配”技术，集成了所有标签的生产步骤到一个自动化的制造工艺。它提高外国人的能力，以每年20级十亿的标签，并最终导致“低得多的成本，”异形首席执行官斯塔夫·普罗德罗莫说。只有这样，它是有意义的标签个人消费品。这是自1999年相去甚远，当标签的成本每人港币$ 16。
For now, Gillette continues to develop production case- and pallet-level solutions for automated tagging and shipping ("We do not use manual slap and ship," Dubash says) as it gears up for Wal-Mart's 2005 mandated launch and expands pilot programs in the U.S. with Target and Albertsons.
"The familiar UPC bar code will be here for many years and will co-exist with its EPC counterpart," Grasso says. "UPC is still the best solution for the supermarket deli counter or for a pack of chewing gum."
Dubash agrees. "EPC is a parallel technology," he says. "Once this gets ubiquitous - and it will, in 10 or 15 years - it becomes redundant information."
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岸边是绍斯伯勒，马萨诸塞州，一个科技记者是谁的技术公司提供产品战略咨询和编辑，开发服务。他可以在到达www.joelshore.com。