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Issue #75 | September 7, 2006 | Written by Louis Sirico and Andy Kowl

Getting in the Zone

Inventory control systems nowadays come in all flavors – from clipboards to mainframes. They involve eyeballs and barcodes. Executing such a system can shut down a business for days or it can create a competitive advantage. At their best, the impact of an inventory management system is profound, helping to also manage operations planning, forecasting, sales, seasonal purchasing and providing performance metrics.

You may have heard inventory control used as the example the first time someone told you what RFID was. A common explanation goes like this: “in the old days (fyi: today) you would have to go to each area within which you are counting inventory; and you would have to scan each item or case....More

As we all know- RFID has been used for many years for physical access control. It is used in banks, office building, government building, and other secured areas.  Most times in secure areas, a combination of RFID entry, biometrics, and man-traps are used to keep the bad guys out. In most situations, RFID is an external facing access-control for perimeter security, as well as internal controls.

This article focuses on a question that I have not answered yet regarding perimeter implementations. In most scenarios I have worked with.. you have the RFID reader > RFID backend/middleware >  door locking mechanism. Meaning, the reader scans the tag, processes it with a YES or NO, then sends a certain signal to the locking mechanism.

Is the backend approved the person for access, the locking mechanism would open. Vice-versa.

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Written By Louis Sirico, Founder, RFIDWizards.com

By invitation, I recently visited a remote facility in northern Virginia to see a demonstration of NOX – a new Intelligent Perimeter Defense system deployed by the FBI that uses covert Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track people and assets without their knowledge.

That’s right, using RFID to track people without their knowledge. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions.

NOX combines high-resolution video pictures and RFID for identification, tracking and tracing, overlaid in real time on a facility map to show the movement of people and assets.

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Written By Louis Sirico with brilliant contributions from Carlos Arteaga and Tony Woods

 

"RFID Middleware is not a long term solution".

It has taken me some time to muster the nerve to publicly proclaim what many experts in the RFID industry have whispered behind closed doors for years.   This should be a little less surprising as several big name providers have recently dropped out of the market.  Yet, now that I have published this bold announcement, I'm left with the enormous task of backing it up and describing the evolutionary process that has taken place.

Let me start by clarifying what I mean by RFID middleware.  Forrester Research defines RFID middleware as "Platforms for managing RFID data and routing it between tag readers or other auto identification devices and enterprise

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