Tag Positioning Lessons from a Case Study

It appears that all the properties that favor the use og RFID over barcode do not apply for this application. The Tags must be: Oriented, Unobstructed, Facing the reader, and in the line of sight.
Tags cost $.50 or more while barcodes are free.
Why is RFID better than barcode?

First, let state that my remarks are limited to the application of the subject article, and not to RFID in general. The article and the study deal with the the use of the EPC UHF PASSIVE RFID specified for use in the Supply Chain, by DoD, Wal-Mart, and others to automatically identify pallet loads of cases for Shipping and Receiveing.
As I read the "Lessons Learned" section of the referenced case study report of the Passive RFID Project at Norfolk, VA Ocean Terminal, most, if not all, of the advantages for using RFID have been compromised to the point that barcodes in the form of the UCC/EAN SSCC would be just as good at a fraction of the cost.

The advantages, cited by Anita in the white paper, apply mostly to Active RFID and some of them are only true if bacode is limited to only the UPC application.
The next response about Ford's position may be a harbinger of what's coming when the Supply Chain begins to reavaluate what they are doing with RFID as oposed to what has been promised by the advocates.

Any objective reading of the military case study of RFID at the Ocean Terminal can not avoid the conclusion that the project was a failure. The question is why is the DoD continuing to pursue it?

Orientation is less an issue with Gen 2 (UHF RFID).

We did a study at an office of a Top 20 Law Firm where we were able to utilize both Gen 1 and Gen 2 -- both are UHF RFID standards -- in a comparison test and the difference was amazing.

The setting was a stack of legal files, each containing a tag, being carried down a hallway at a brisk walk within 8 feet of a FileTrail ZoneReader. The tags were placed in the exact same position within the file, ensuring that from the perspective of the reader, they were stacked on top of each other.

The files containing Gen 1 tags would read at a rate 85%. This varied a bit when you changed the orientation of the stack, and suffered when you held the stack of files under your arm.

The same files with Gen 2 tags, in the same scenario, approached 100%. This was so constant, regardless of orientation, that there was no perceptible correlation between orientation and reading.

Because of this test that law firm is implementing our RFID File Tracking Solution integrated with their MDY FileSurf system this year at several offices.

The conclusions we drew were, that in a practical and realistic office environment Gen 2 is not very orientation-sensitive, less susceptible to being blocked by body parts, and had much less problem with tag-dense placement.

In addition, the cost of the tags dropped from Gen 1 to Gen 2. As a result, we are able to sell tags for our RFID File Tracking Solutions at half what others charge for file tracking tags.

See our solutions at http://www.rfid-file-tracking.com/.