RFID Technology Gets Shot In The Arm

GlobeRanger this week added RFID support to its Microsoft .Net-based software for receiving goods. In so doing, GlobeRanger joins many other vendors scrambling for the attention of companies looking to adopt the radio technology within their supply chain.

The four-year-old Richardson, Texas, company launched the 4.0 release of iMotion at the EPC Symposium and International Supply Chain Week Conference and Expo in Chicago. GlobeRanger also announced a partnership with Manhattan Associates, a supply-chain execution software maker, to integrate their respective products.

RFID, or radio frequency identification, became a hot technology in the retail industry earlier this year when Wal-Mart said all suppliers must mark pallets and cases with RFID tags starting in January 2005. The announcement opened a huge sales opportunity for supply chain vendors, which have been rushing to add support for the technology to their product lines.

GlobeRanger's software is often used as the link between a warehouse management system and the worker on the receiving dock. Information identifying goods entering the warehouse is typed into a handheld device that transmits the data wirelessly to iMotion, which feeds the information into the warehouse management system. The software also supports bar-code scanners.

With iMotion 4.0, GlobeRanger has added adapters for RFID readers made by Alien Technology, Intermec, Texas Instruments and others. IMotion, built on the Microsoft .Net framework, is marketed as an application platform because it ships with a software development kit that enables customers to build in their own business rules.

Developers, for example, could program the software to send an e-mail alert or page to a warehouse manager if an order received is short by 5 percent or more. The SDK is integrated with Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net tool suite.

IMotion ships with prebuilt components that are generic to the receiving process. The software, for example, provides data filtering and mapping of the Electronic Product Code read from pallets to the warehouse management system. The product ships with a Visual Workflow Editor for configuring the network of devices and business logic.

IMotion includes an RFID reader emulator that simulates real-world behavior of readers, antenna fields and tags to help developers design and optimize custom components built in Visual Studio. A monitoring tool is available to check reader performance and a management tool is included for managing data movement from readers to ERP and warehouse systems.

Jeff Woods, analyst for market researcher Gartner Inc., found noteworthy iMotion's ability to handle direct-to-store goods, such as bread, potato chips and soda, even though it's a process handled primarily through bar code scanning.

Direct-to-store "is one of those interesting processes where RFID might be appropriate," Woods said. "We're still waiting to see how the business cases on it work out."

Receiving direct-to-store goods, nevertheless, is a good area for a vendor to focus for automation because the process is time consuming and a lot of product is lost. "It's a major pain point for a lot of businesses," Woods said.

IMotion, however, is not a product that would be of much use to suppliers trying to adopt RFID technology within a high-volume distribution center that feeds Wal-Mart. "What I see from GlobeRanger today doesn't help me comply with Wal-Mart," Woods said. "Although there are other interesting applications for their technology, they're not the primary focus of most manufacturers."

As a company, GlobeRanger, which is privately held, has yet to achieve high sales volume for any of its software. "They may have it in this receiving application, but that's not clear yet," Woods said.

Jennifer Mao, vice president of marketing at GlobeRanger, said one company, an airplane manufacturer, has licensed iMotion for inventory parts management. Other companies are evaluating and testing the product.

Mao would not disclose pricing but said the software is sold by server license and number of users.

To extend the reach of its product further, GlobeRanger has agreed to work with Manhattan Associates in tightly integrating their two products. Key initiatives under way include Manhattan Associates developing applications on the iMotion platform and offering GlobeRanger's wireless inbound/outbound logistics application.

This story courtesy of Techweb.com.

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