Evolving from Closed Loop to Open Loop RFID Applications

The capabilities of RFID and EPC are difficult to weave into routine thoughts and plans. They are such a departure from today’s technology, that even after many exposures to RFID and EPC, the influence of years of prior experience without them still injects a bias in planning the future. This bias is an adoption challenge that is holding back big returns for organizations and economies of all sizes.

One step to cope with the adoption challenge is to work on a small scale. Alan Sherman of OATSystems recently gave me an example of a small-scale success that is bringing RFID into every day life. An ambulance company previously spent hours with a manual checklist making sure the right equipment was in place to confirm the ambulance was ready for medical emergencies. With an RFID solution, this ambulance company now knows instantly whether essential equipment is in the ambulance, and they are incorporating RFID into ideas for the future of their mechanical maintenance.

Beyond the challenge of implementing closed-loop applications, the more difficult challenge of open loop applications awaits. The ambulance success and most accumulated RFID success stories are closed loop applications. In these applications, tagging and reading are performed on items while they are within the control of a single company. In open loop applications, tags and readers across multiple organizations work together, so that readers from a company can recognize tags and retrieve information about tagged items whether that company placed the tag on the item or not.

Envisioning open loop applications is more difficult than envisioning closed loop applications because it includes coordinated effort among many players about the fundamentals of reading tags, capturing related transactions (Application Level Events), and back-end systems. ATA-2000 and Produce Traceability Initiative (PRI) are examples of ongoing implementations that incorporate open loop thinking. ATA-2000, supported by the aviation industry via the Air Transport Association, defines cradle to grave tracing of aircraft parts, to support quality and efficiency in maintenance and regulatory compliance. PTI, supported by Canadian Produce Marketing Association, Produce Marketing Association, and United Fresh Produce Association, defines tracing or produce from growers, to packers, to retail locations.

ATA-2000 and PTI are exciting programs that are fundamentally changing the way business is done in aviation and in food supply. These types of open loop applications reflect a big way of thinking that produces big returns. They present an example that others can use to identify and envision additional open loop applications to unlock more of the big returns.