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RFID EPC Global Compliance Fundamentals
RFID Technology Is Increasingly In Demand
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is mandated technology that matters to the supply chain market today. Mandates from the United States Department of Defense (DOD), Wal-Mart, Target, Albertsons and Tesco, some of the world's largest retailers and supply chain drivers, are requiring their suppliers to utilize RFID. The tagging of outbound pallets and cases from key vendors with EPC Global compliant RFID/Barcode tags will increase their supply chain efficiency. The goal of these retail giants is to have 100% of all cases/pallets shipped into their distribution centers labeled with EPCglobal compliant RFID tags by the end of 2006. Is your company ready?
- How does my company become compliant?
- Who is EPCglobal, Inc.?
- What is the EPC (Electronic Product Code)?
- What is the EPCglobal Network?
- How does the EPCglobal Network Function?
- Benefits of EPC Technologies
- EPC Tags versus Barcodes
- Is the EPCglobal Network really a "global" initiative?
How does my company become compliant?
With the help of an EPCglobal solution provider. Unified Barcode & RFID, Inc can assist with your subscription to EPCglobal, Inc, provide an out of the box hardware/software solution to produce your EPCglobal compliant RFID labels and help to integrate the technology into your own business processes to ensure you are extracting maximum value from the system.
Who is EPCglobal, Inc.?
EPCglobal, Inc is a joint venture between EAN International and the Uniform Code Council. EPCglobal is a not-for-profit organization entrusted industry to establish and support the EPC Network as the global standard for immediate, automatic, and accurate identification of any item in the supply chain of any company, in any industry, anywhere in the world. EPCglobal is a member-driven organization comprised of leading firms and industries focused on creating global standards for the EPCglobal Network™. Our goal is increased visibility and efficiency throughout the supply chain and higher quality information flow between your company and its key trading partners.
What is the EPC (Electronic Product Code)?
The Electronic Product Code™ (EPC) is the next generation of product identification. The EPC is a simple, compact “license plate” that uniquely identifies objects (items, cases, pallets, locations, etc.) in the supply chain. The EPC is built around a basic hierarchical idea that can be used to express a wide variety of different, existing numbering systems, like the EAN.UCC System Keys, UID, VIN, and other numbering systems.
Like many current numbering schemes used in commerce, the EPC is divided into numbers that identify the manufacturer and product type. But, the EPC uses an extra set of digits, a serial number, to identify unique items. The EPC is the key to the information about the product it identifies that exists in the EPCglobal Network. An EPC number contains:
- Header, which identifies the length, type, structure, version and generation of EPC
- Manager Number, which identifies the company or company entity
- Object Class, similar to a stock keeping unit or SKU
- Serial Number, which is the specific instance of the Object Class being tagged
Additional fields may also be used as part of the EPC in order to properly encode and decode information from different numbering systems into their native (human-readable) forms. The EPC is part of a set of technologies that work together to allow companies to have complete supply chain visibility.
What Is The EPCglobal Network?
The EPCglobal Network is a set of technologies that enable immediate, automatic identification and sharing of information on items in the supply chain. In that way, the EPCglobal Network will make organizations more effective by enabling true visibility of information about items in the supply chain.
How does the EPCglobal Network function?
The EPCglobal Network uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to enable true visibility of information about items in the supply chain. The network is comprised of five fundamental elements: the Electronic Product Code (EPC), the ID System (EPC Tags and Readers), Object Name Service (ONS), Physical Markup Language (PML), and Savant.
Essentially, the EPC is a number designed to uniquely identify a specific item in the supply chain. The EPC number sits on a tag comprised of a silicon chip and an antenna, which is attached to an item. Using radio identification technology (RFID), a tag “communicates” its number to a reader.
The reader then passes the number to a computer or local application system, known as the Object Name Service (ONS). ONS tells the computer systems where to locate information on the network about the object carrying an EPC, such as when the item was produced.
Physical Markup Language (PML) is used as a common language in the EPCglobal Network to define data on physical objects.
Benefits of EPC Technologies
The EPCglobal Network will make organizations more effective by enabling true visibility of information about items in the supply chain. Having more accurate, immediate information about the location of items, the history of items, and the number of items in the supply chain will enable organizations to be more responsive to customers and consumer needs through more efficient, customer-driven operations.
EPC Tags versus Barcodes
Will EPC tags replace Barcodes? No. Although barcodes have limitations (they require line-of-sight for scanning, have limited encoding capacity, and cannot receive and store information), they are currently used by more than 1 million firms in more than 140 countries across more than 23 industries, and clearly remain important to supply chain operations. We believe that bar codes and EPC will coexist for many years to come.
Is the EPCglobal Network really a “global” initiative?
Yes. The EPCglobal Network has been a global initiative from its inception. In developing the EPCglobal Network, the Auto-ID Center, headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has:
- Conducted research on a global basis through five of the world’s leading research universities.
- Received sponsorship support from over 100 of the world's leading companies, representing a wide range of industries with differing needs and interests.
As the driver of adoption of the EPCglobal Network, EPCglobal continues that tradition. EPCglobal is a joint venture by EAN International and the Uniform Code Council. Together, EAN International and the UCC represent 100 member organizations worldwide with more than one million members representing 102 countries.