How radio frequency identification tags will help retailers, from supply chains to store shelves.
Radio frequency identification technology is finally coming into its own. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, has asked suppliers to attach RFID tags to product shipment pallets by 2005 to automate tracking. EPCGlobal, an international organization helping to drive and implement the technology, is building a network in which every consumer item will have a tag and an electronic product code, or EPC. But drawbacks to RFID technology, including its high cost and concerns about consumer privacy, must be overcome before it finds widespread use. Here's how tracking with RFID tags is expected to work in the supply chain.
To read the entire article you must log in:
Most of our content — all daily news, blogs, and videos — is free. Magazine stories are paid. To read this story, you must have a subscription or you must use a reading credit. Registration to Technology Review is free and entitles registrants to three free reading credits.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
View full PDF >
Listen to story > 
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed