The retail industry continues to embrace RFID technology. Sales gains, operational efficiencies and a reduction in shrink have been well documented, and 2012 is expected to be a breakthrough year as major retailers cue up the technology for deployment. RFID in retail is expected to become ubiquitous within 12 to 36 months. As Macy’s Chief [...]
Big insurers are banking on the benefits of RFID technology to open new markets in the insurance industry. Better yet, efficiency gains and reduced supply chain risks from deploying RFID could lead to cheaper insurance premiums for those that deploy the technology, bettering ROI’s that are already soaring. At a recent RFID and food safety [...]
RFID is used to track all kinds of wildlife, and now scientists are using the technology to track the feeding habits of common backyard birds. Scientists and students at Cornell Lab have affixed RFID tags to 125 individual birds of four species in order to learn more about their daily feeding habits. Since the project [...]
The recent news about potentially unsafe levels of arsenic in fruit juices has reignited the focus on food safety and monitoring the food supply chain. Tonight, MIT will host a very timely seminar on RFID and food safety. The RFID SIG event, “RFID Protects the Food Chain,” will be held at MIT’s Stata Center beginning [...]
The U.S. continues to lag when it comes to food safety and RFID, but that isn’t preventing a strong global market from developing for the use of the technology for food traceability and to prevent illnesses. In a new report published by IDTechEx, a technology vendor is quoted as saying that “the USA has, if [...]
Last year RFID 24-7 wrote about the tagging of 20,000 Koa trees in Hawaii to allow investors in the Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods Koa reforestation project to track and monitor the progress of their investments in real time. The initial pilot tagged about 20,000 trees. Now, middle school students in India are tagging saplings as a [...]
In case you missed last week’s issue, we’ve posted our lead story here: The Hawaii Department of Agriculture is a leader when it comes to piloting RFID for food safety. In May, the department began shipping 70 RFID-enabled pallets of produce between distribution centers on the islands of Maui, Hawaii and Oahu to monitor shipping [...]
The insurance industry is warming up to RFID technology. Insurers represent a strong market for applications like asset tracking for IT items and document management. But this morning’s announcement from the Hartford Financial Services Group takes the potential benefits of RFID to a higher level. By teaming up with cold chain solution provider Intelleflex, the [...]
RFID technology has allowed researchers a rare glimpse into the flight patterns and homing abilities of honey bees. A report in the scientific PloS ONE Journal says that bees frequently fly several kilometers to and from vital resources, and utilize a form of symbolic dance language to communicate those locations to fellow bees. Each bee was [...]
New Zealand-based Firstlight Foods knows that its customers want to know where and how their beef was produced, and how fresh it is when it arrives at the marketplace. Through a partnership with Omnitrol and RFID systems integrator Trident RFID, Firstlight now has those checks and balances in place. Firstlight, which processes and sells high [...]