RFID technology is ushering in the third outbreak

After RFID technology has experienced two outbreaks of technical trials and business model exploration, it is now ushering in the third outbreak. With the increase in labor costs, in the two major application scenarios of the logistics industry and the industrial Internet, the electronic label technology The commercial model finally landed, and the third outbreak was at the time.

RFID radio frequency identification, also known as radio frequency identification, is a communication technology, and tags encapsulated by RFID chips are commonly called electronic tags. Radio signals can be used to identify specific targets and read and write related data, without the need to establish mechanical or optical contact between the identification system and specific targets. It is considered to be one of the most promising information technologies in the 21st century.

5G meets the massive demand for IoT applications and can drive the upgrade of the entire industry chain such as communications, chips, electronic tags, and terminal applications. RFID is an important data source for the Internet of Things with a wide range of applications. Currently, the number of tags deployed globally exceeds 50 billion , A large amount of data is continuously being generated every day. At the same time, RFID can automatically realize data collection, and the system deployment cost is low. It is the safest and most efficient identification layer of the Internet of Things.

Mr. Min Hao has witnessed the two rises, booms and troughs of the RFID industry during his decades of work. As early as 1998, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed to use RFID for item traceability, that is, the concept of the Internet of Things. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States proposed a network framework for product electronic codes and proposed the use of radio frequency tags as the carrier of item identification. The concept and solution of the Internet of Things with the Internet of Things. This is the first Internet of Things architecture proposed in the world.

At the same time, the issue of RFID standardization has gradually been put on the agenda. With funding from retail giant Wal-Mart, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been looking for partners around the world to participate in research and develop industry standards since 2002. As a professor in the Department of Microelectronics, School of Information Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Min Hao's laboratory is one of the global RFID industry standard setting teams.

The first booming development of the RFID industry was led by Wal-Mart and Gillette in the United States. The grand picture of the RFID industry that Wal-Mart described at the time inspired the RFID industry. Wal-Mart proposed that every product sold by the company by 2006 Everyone will be equipped with RFID chips, and the huge market behind them is exciting.

Because for the retail industry, the core competitiveness is a low-cost and efficient logistics supply chain system. However, high inventory costs, low service efficiency, and low information accuracy have caused great troubles for retailers. Min Hao specifically explained to us the high risk that the bullwhip effect in supply chain management brings to retailers. The bullwhip effect refers to a phenomenon of demand variation and amplification in the supply chain. When the information flow in the supply chain is transmitted from the final customer to the original supplier, the information cannot be effectively shared, which causes the information to be distorted and gradually enlarged. As a result, demand information has seen increasing fluctuations.

Therefore, in order to allow market information to be most intuitively fed back to the original suppliers, supply chain visualization is an urgent need for enterprises, and electronic labels are an effective way to achieve this goal. The use of RFID technology to manage the supply chain can improve the efficiency of finished product entry and exit and the accuracy and efficiency of warehouse inventory, reduce the error rate of finished product shipments, avoid out-of-stock of specific products, fleeing goods, etc., and realize refined inventory management. The prospect is huge .

但尚未再保险沃尔玛的宏伟的蓝图alized. The reason is that the return on investment of RFID tags cannot be guaranteed, and it eventually becomes a bubble. The second outbreak of electronic tags in the clothing industry was led by overseas clothing giants ZARA and H&M. It is RFID electronic tags that accurately and timely transmit the traceable data of consumers in clothing stores to clothing manufacturers, so that ZARA and H&Ms fast-fashionable clothing manufacturers can adjust production types and batches in real time according to store sales, and achieve clothing The on-demand production of category sizes, zero inventory, and development and expansion to today's scale. Currently, Uniqlo, Decathlon, Nike, etc. are more mature in the application of electronic tags in the global apparel industry. Electronic tags allow the apparel industry to visualize the supply chain of enterprises. Manufacturers can get the most intuitive feedback from the market to deal with the instability of production, supply, inventory management and marketing, and seize market opportunities. In the second wave of RFID, foreign system integrators and application companies such as the United States have played a significant role in this.

Looking at the present, Min Hao confidently told us that the third outbreak of RFID chips will be concentrated in the logistics and express delivery industry and will be led and promoted by China. We can clearly see that throughout the world, the leader of the e-commerce express delivery industry is China. The number of express delivery in China has increased from 65 billion last year to 80 billion this year. Such a large express delivery scale is unmatched by any country in the world. The anti-counterfeiting, traceability, and batch identification characteristics of RFID tags are the guarantee for the safe transportation of express and logistics. As long as the cost of the chip is within a controllable range, it is sufficient to support the third wave of the RFID industry.

In addition, the booming Industrial Internet of Things this year has higher regulatory requirements for assets, and the manufacturing industry is transforming to smart manufacturing. Enterprises demand for the Industrial Internet of Things has greatly increased. For example, sensor requirements such as temperature measurement and displacement have made the third wave of RFID functions are more powerful, and continue to forcefully promote the development of electronic tags. On the To C side, the rise of unmanned retail, smart medical, etc. has allowed electronic tags to cooperate with readers to continue to grow and strengthen in terms of reliability, comprehensiveness and functionality. Therefore, we are very confident to see the rapid development of domestic RFID chip tag and supporting manufacturers in the next few years.