Material Handling Management magazine has an interesting article about the top technology trends for 2006 affecting its industry.

It suggests that 2005 was the Year of RFID, and that substantial gains were made during the year. In fact, much of the article is about RFID. Here is a snippet where they quote Matt Ream, senior manager of RFID systems at Zebra Technologies:

As the volumes go up, the so-called slap-and-ship approach to compliance will become cost prohibitive, says Ream. This is already fueling more interest in automatic print-and-apply equipment. He says that the Generation 2 protocol is improving programming times, which will eventually mean that high-volume operations may need fewer printing/encoding machines.

"We're seeing at least a 10-fold decrease in the amount of time it takes to program and verify a tag, which ultimately means increased throughput in those applications," says Ream. It's one more indication -- like the recent drop in tag prices to the 14-cent range -- that the technology is getting closer to the "sweet spot" where it will make economic sense in a wide variety operations. Ream questions the litany of reporting saying that there is no ROI in RFID.

"A lot of companies are very tight-lipped about where they're seeing the value because they think it can give them a competitive advantage," he says.

Read the entire article.