Due to the requirements of significant users such as Wal-Mart

and the US Department of Defense (DoD), RFID tags using

EPCglobal standards will be widely used. These tags are basic

identity for products and will be expected for inventory control

as well as all transaction processing. The investment in RFID

for control of work-in-process, shipping, and receiving inventory

will also be highly beneficial in industries not directly

affected by Wal-Mart or the DoD, and in which previous studies

of barcode use did not prove to be effective. Contrasted to

the human actions required to read barcodes, the automatic

reading of RFID tags will yield positive cost saving results.


Barcoded shipping container labels are supplied in many

industries, especially automotive parts manufacturing and

automobile assembly. However, in some industries, shipping

container barcode labels are less than effective due to the manual

scanning step required before data can be used. RF Database

tags can overcome this problem with properly configured

readers. Inventory reduction resulting in a net positive cash

flow benefit should ensure that RF Database tags become popular.

However, as the industry has not focused on this area of

application, RF Database tags are still relatively expensive.


To replace shipping container barcodes, RF Database tags must

follow industry standards for encoding the contained database.

Using the EDIFACT encoding methods based on XML is the

key to standards; however, this work is incomplete. Many

years of development led to the X.12 EDI standards for each

industry, and now much of these efforts are being converted to

EDIFACT standards. When these standards are complete, they

will become the benchmark for each shipping container

description.