China is RFID hub

Though radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has gained considerable buzz in corporate America, one has to look East to see the largest concentration of RFID applications in use, says CIO.

The Chinese government's national identification-card program is currently the biggest RFID project in the world in terms of overall value, according to the recent IDTechEx report, "RFID in China 2008-2018." The rollout has an overall estimated worth of $6 billion, which includes all of the associated RFID tags and systems, such as card readers.

The Chinese ID card project began in 2005, and once it has been completed by the end of 2008, nearly 1 billion government ID cards embedded with an RFID chip will have been issued, states a recent ABI Research report.

Supply Chain Digest recently spoke to two consumer goods manufacturers (which each asked to remain anonymous) that are applying industry standard GS1 ITF-14 (Interleaved 2 of 5) case codes to each carton of their goods.

The problem - both of these manufacturers recently started being fined a significant amount per carton by a few retailers in the department store category that do not want any barcode but their own GS1-128 serialised shipping labels on each carton.

This puts theses manufacturers in a terrible position - some retailers, such as Wal-Mart, require the ITF-14 case code on all non-RFID vendor shipments. These barcodes are often printed as part of the carton manufacturing process, or are printed on an ink jet printer or a barcode label print-and-apply device at the end of the production line.

India has started a pilot project to see the viability of Multi-Purpose National Identity Card (smart card) to consider its implementation at the national level, says The Statesman.

The project envisages providing unique national identity number to each person in the National Population Register, but because of the complexities involved both in the processes and technology, a pilot project was launched.

The pilot is on an experimental basis covering a population of 30.95 lakhs in the selected areas in 12 states and one Union Territory, said the minister of state for home, Manikrao H Gavit while replying to a question in the Lok Sabha.