This is part 2 of an exclusive interview with Loïc Feinbier, an Accenture RFID expert, who unveils his personal interest, vision, advise and experience on RFID. Check the previous part for an introduction to Loïc and his interest and experience in RFID. In the next couple of weeks more parts of this extensive story will appear on this weblog, so stay tuned.

Q: Which current business application of RFID do you see as most promising for business?

Everybody talks about supply chain management so I won’t (it’s an obvious one although it’s not sure if all supply chain partners will benefit the same – so far they don’t)…

For those who use RFID I would certainly predict a big push in asset tracking applications (e.g. managing expensive fleets of pallets, plastic trays, gas bottles or even beer kegs), which by the way already today is one of the rare domains where RFID almost always has a business case. There are plenty of other areas I could enlist here, but to be honest I have not the slightest clue of what really is going to be the biggest value proposition for RFID use (and I think anybody who thinks he can is probably the first one proven wrong).

In fact I would doubt it’s even important as I really do expect this technology to creep into pretty much any aspect of industry and our daily lives. New manufacturing techniques (better yields / reduced losses, higher speed / output, better quality), new materials (plastic circuits, conductive inks / printed antennas) and the laws of mass production will bring prices down (today we have already reached a price of roughly 7 cent for an EPC inlay).

What I dare predict though, are big opportunities in other domains: any kind of RFID services. Be it people like BT who effectively try to leverage their existing communication infrastructure into a giant RFID Middleware and corresponding services, or people like CISCO who want to become the RFID network, or then the Oracles, Sybases and Microsofts of this world who would love to give their low-end version of Database products away as Freeware while trying to understand what comes after Terrabyte). In the end, I wouldn’t be astonished if Google had something in the pipeline, too (maybe a zoomed view on your parcel chilling out at customs in Hong Kong via Google Earth’s RFID plugin?)…

Other multi-billion dollar business prospects may be RFID-specific business intelligence providers (the ones who have the answer to the question “now what the heck does all this data actually mean”; today a domain where there is almost nothing available) or some sort of intraplanetary clearinghouse for inter-company RFID data exchange (remember: so far and for the most only the retailers benefit from tracking of shipments, while manufacturers have to bear most of the cost).

Finally, security applications might see a big boost, too. I don’t share the view of some technological environmentalists who want to make us believe that RFID is the ultimate plague to the human being (at least it was last week, maybe now it’s bird flu?), because the risk is NOT in the tag (if you’re lucky you can spot that there is a tag or maybe even read it’s ID… so?) or the wireless transmission, but in the database that holds the history – and that one we can protect with technology that has been somewhat proven over years. That being said, there has been research lately suggesting that tags could become carriers for “RFID viruses”, which certainly is arguable, but if you read in between the lines it ultimately all comes back to a leak in the back-end.

Q: What business application of RFID, that is currently only known inside the labs, do you expect the most of in the future?

I could say “I really can’t tell you or I’d have to try one of those nasty flashers from MIB on you right afterwards” or “I’m no longer a researcher with the Labs so I don’t know”, but of course that’s not what you want to hear, and many of the answers to this question I have already given in the previous one any way.

Instead of talking about the future, let me first take a step back into the past when Dadong Wan, one of my former Labs colleagues out of Chicago has been really visionary creating the Online Medicine Cabinet and Online Wardrobe prototypes as early as 1996. For the first one, we still (almost 10 years later!!) get media interest today, and I firmly believe we will see these types of applications come into reality in a not too far future. It’s just a question of time, and once there are tags everywhere, household appliances will pop up that make use of them. Just like I spotted a barcode-enabled microwave on my last trip to the states – “scan me and I’ll cook you” – well or something like that…

Apart from that, RFID is now an almost mature technology, which is why it has been “officially” handed over to the Infrastructure Consulting group.

Stay tuned for part 3 when Loïc further displays his vision on RFID.
If you have any questions or comments to Loïc, just post your reaction by logging in via the link below.

This is part 1 of an exclusive interview with Loïc Feinbier, an Accenture RFID expert, who unveils his personal interest, vision, advise and experience on RFID. In the next couple of weeks more parts of this extensive story will appear on this weblog, so stay tuned.

Loïc Feinbier is a manager with Accenture’s Mobility & RFID Specialty that is part of Accenture’s Infrastructure Consulting group and a former researcher at Accenture Technology Labs. As such he has almost 8 years of professional experience in consulting, 5 of which he spent with a focus on RFID technology, helping clients and Accenture teams from various industries, including two major retailers, two leading fashion manufacturers, and various Resources companies (Oil, Chemicals and Steel).

Loïc has touched on many aspects of the technology, from the hands-on development of many of Accenture’s early prototypes using passive, semi-active, active and specialty tags (e.g. with temperature sensors), all the way to studies and business cases.

Internally, Loïc has created Accenture’s first ever Silent Commerce CD-ROM training as early as in 2000, and is one of the designers and faculty of Accenture’s full-week “Silent Commerce Bootcamp” schools (Silent Commerce/RFID Market Technology and Solution Delivery and Silent Commerce/RFID Immersion Training) held at various locations across Europe and the US throughout last year.

Loïc has also helped design and implement Accenture’s Silent Commerce Infrastructure (SCI.NET), an RFID Middleware that has served as basis for many prototypes ever since.

Q: Loïc, why are you so interested in RFID?

It simply is a great technology (tell me one company – no matter the industry – and I’m pretty sure I can name you at least 10 RFID applications they would beg to have, provided the economics work out) and a very interesting challenge at the same time.

When I first started looking into this technology it was literally brand new (even though informed people may know that the technology dates back to World War II when – active – transponders, the size of a suitcase, were used to distinguish friendly from enemy aircraft) and there were almost no products to get hold of.

Today, a LOT has changed, and RFID is already sneaking into everyday parts of our lives. Just cut right through your tickets for this year’s Soccer Worldcup (well, maybe not really) and you’ll see that they contain an RFID tag intended to prevent counterfeiting. Matter of fact, it gets even better, as it appears that the renown Fraunhofer Institute is looking into developing a soccer ball, using active RFID technology, in order to prevent another 1966-like disaster with England scoring a decisive goal that really wasn’t one (OK, I admit, both the author of this article and the Fraunhofer Institute are … guess what … German).

Other areas with already widespread use of RFID are the badges that you and I use every day for building access, many car keys that secure your vehicle against short-circuiting it while storing your preferred seat position and air condition settings. Sooner than you might think, you will also be traveling with your biometric passport, storing your indexes, iris and photo on an RFID chip.

In the end, the number of email requests I am getting is probably the best (yet for me personally rather the worst) indicator of how many more companies become interested in this technology with every day that passes by.

What has not changed much since the “early days” is the public understanding of what RFID can do and what it can’t. There are still so many people who truly believe that you can drive a pallet with 200 bottles of excellent Oban Whiskey, full of liquid and packaged into metallic boxes, through a gate antenna at 60 km/h, and read every tag every time. You can’t. And if you can: show me and I’ll pay you a million Euros (or better you should pay me a million Euros as you’d most likely be a millionaire any way).

It’s lifting the mystery around this technology, and showing our clients how they can best apply it in scenarios that create actual value for them and really do work, that I appreciate so much.

Stay tuned for part 2 when Loïc explains his vision on RFID in business.
If you have any questions or comments to Loïc, just post your reaction by logging in via the link below.

Researchers from the Faculty of Sciences of the ‘Vrije Universiteit’ in Amsterdam do extensive research on RFID malware: RFID exploits, RFID worms and RFID viruses. Today, they published their paper ‘Is Your Cat Infected With a Computer Virus?’ in which they describe that it is possible to infect an RFIC chip with an virus, and also mention a number of countermeasures. What’s going on here? PhD candidate Melanie Rieback and her supervisor Prof. Andrew Tanenbaum have found a way of placing a computer virus onto a RFID tag. This was previously considered impossible on account of the limited memory capacity of the tags. Melanie Rieback gave a demonstration of her discovery on Wednesday 15 March at the annual IEEE Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications in Pisa. The press release illustrates the effects of this virus with the following example: “Take, for example, the airport at Las Vegas, which handles two million items of luggage per month. As from May 2006, RFID tags will be attached to cases to speed up the baggage handling process. If someone intentionally attaches an infected RFID tag to his case, the entire system will be thrown into disarray. As soon as the case is scanned, the infected tag will be able to invade the airport’s central baggage database and all cases subsequently checked in will also become infected. On arrival at other airports, these cases will be scanned again and within 24 hours, hundreds of airports throughout the world could be infected. The perfect solution for smugglers and terrorists wanting to send suspicious luggage across the world without being noticed.” Okay - this sounds threatening, or not? Well, it basically says that in case you have an infected RFID chip, the virus won’t just hop from one chip to another. It needs a carrier or a platform to spread itself - in the example a database. Once inside the database, the virus can write to other chips, as RFID is not read only, but also writable. So the message is: take care of your RFID infrastructure, upto the back-end. And is this a surprising development? No, of course not. Everything that can be created, can be destroyed. The researchers state that “the spread of RFID malware may launch a new frontier of cat-and-mouse activity”. Which is true - you see it with computers: Not only Windows suffers from this game, but Apple can’t have a lucky escape either. Whenever a security leak is discovered, it will be abused; and when it’s been solved, a new leak will be discovered. This will be no different for RFID! Some weeks ago, another issue made it rapidly into all newspapers: You can crack RFID tags with your cellphone; and some weeks earlier: The Dutch RFID passport was hacked. So RFID: welcome to the real world!

With success comes growth and Accenture is growing fast. So much so, that we’re approaching 2,000 people in the Netherlands. This is great, but not nearly enough. We need more people to join fast, both junior and more senior.

Accenture is not only a potential great place to work for graduates, but also for more experienced professionals. To make potential recruits aware of this, we have launched Accenture is next. It’s a site that gives its visitors a glimpse of what it’s like to work at Accenture and why it’s worth considering Accenture as a next step in their careers.
I especially like the ‘real people’ concept; each person telling a story is an actual colleague I work with. I believe this also reflects on the character of the site.

Anyway, have a look and see whether Accenture is next for you (http://www.accentureisnext.nl/recruitment/vacatures.aspx).

Overal waar ik kom, probeer ik met een groepje van zo’n 20 tot 30 mensen bij elkaar te zitten om van gedachten te wisselen over de toekomst van Accenture. Ook deze week in Milaan, Brussel, Amsterdam en Bilbao. Praten over de strategische keuzen van Accenture, over Horizon 2012. En wat me opvalt, is dat afgezien van specifieke lokale of business gerelateerde zaken, de vragen en onderwerpen die de revue passeren niet zoveel anders zijn. ‘Hoe kunnen we snel opschalen?’ ‘Hoe zorgen we ervoor dat we goed blijven samenwerken?’, ‘Wat zijn de carrièreperspectieven?’ Iedereen wil vooruit en werkt vanuit zijn eigen discipline aan onze gezamenlijke toekomst. 2012 is slechts 6 jaar verder, maar komt door het enthousiasme van de mensen nog dichterbij.

In Bilbao heb ik gezien wat er in tien jaar in een stad kan veranderen. Daar komt het strategisch plan waaraan wij tien jaar geleden een bijdrage hebben geleverd tot leven. En de hoofdstad van Baskenland bruist. Met het SEALA managementteam hebben we niet alleen vergaderd, maar natuurlijk ook een bezoek gebracht aan het Guggenheim. Het gigantische, sculpturale gebouw werd geheel bekleed met glimmend titanium en verwijst daarmee naar één van onze belangrijke opdrachtgevers in Bilbao, de staal- en metaalindustrie. In het museum hebben we een fototentoonstelling over het thema ‘handen’ bekeken. En je begrijpt, ’s avonds was de link snel gelegd: ‘The future is in our hands.’

Tijdens mijn bezoek aan ons kantoor in Zuid Afrika werd me duidelijk wat een voortrekkersrol Accenture vervult in het Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programma van de Zuid Afrikaanse overheid. Met dit beleid probeert de overheid de (blanke) economie diverser te maken door zwarte ondernemers en managers - via eigendomsoverdracht en bestuursparticipatie – een rol te geven. Een flexibele score-kaart moet de ‘BEE-conformiteit’ van elk bedrijf of elke sector toetsen. Accenture is voor 35% in handen van de zwarte eigenaren. Daarmee lopen we binnen het bedrijfsleven voorop. Het is goed om te horen op welke wijze collega’s in Zuid Afrika omgaan met diversiteit, zeker nu dit in Nederland één van de corporate programma’s is.
In Zuid Afrika hebben we Nederlandse klanten ontvangen en kennis laten maken met onze praktijk aldaar. We hebben een BPO centrum in Zuid Afrika opgezet, vanwaaruit we Nederlandstalige backofficewerkzaamheden voor Nederlandse klanten kunnen uitvoeren. Bijzonder interessant. Het kostenniveau ligt tussen dat van India en Oost Europa. BPO is en blijft een stap die zorgvuldigheid vereist. Ik merkte dan ook dat het goed is om samen met de klant te ervaren wat de kansen zijn en met elkaar van gedachten te wisselen over de mogelijkheden. Ik ben enthousiast en ook de klanten waren geïnteresseerd. Het zou me niets verbazen als we aan het einde van het jaar daar zo’n 50 mensen aan het werk hebben.

Terug in Nederland, weer even terug naar het begin. Tijdens het Carrière Event in de Utrechtse Jaarbeurs mocht ik met partners van andere firma’s en studenten onder leiding van Peter van der Geer debatteren over stellingen als ‘Jonge consultant wel/niet naar de klant’ en ‘Advies versus implementatie’. Was erg geanimeerd en leuk. Eén ding werd me in ieder geval duidelijk; studenten van nu zijn prima debaters.
Vervolgens in witte smoking (dresscode) naar het lustrumfeest van ATS. Bijna 1000 ATS-ers met partners in het wit, goede muziek, een prima feest.

En dan ’s zondags niets anders dan bijtanken voor de open haard.

Katherine Albrecht is on a mission from God. The influential consumer advocate has written a new book warning her fellow Christians that radio frequency identification may evolve to become the ‘mark of the beast’ - meaning the technology is a sign that the end-times are drawing near.

Albrecht has been a leading opponent of RFID and hopes her new book, The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance, will be embraced by the 59 per cent of Americans who share her belief that the Book of Revelation in the Bible forecasts events that are yet to come.

But fear not, says Boston University professor Richard Landes, who specialises in the history of apocalyptic thought. New technologies often trigger alarm among millenarians. Y2K, bar codes and Social Security numbers all triggered end-times warnings.’ Even the introduction of the Gutenberg press caused waves of apocalyptic thinking,’ said Landes.

Thank god…

According to a news message from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), there is a shortage of individuals skilled in radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. A recent survey revealed that 3 out of 4 of the technology companies participating in the survey said they “do not believe there is a sufficient pool of talent in RFID technology to hire from”. Furthermore, 80 percent of these companies believe that this would negatively impact the adoption of RFID technology. Significantly more than the 53 percent of a year before.

The question rises, what does this mean?

On the one hand, it is of course regretful that the adoption of a new technology could be done faster if there were more experts. On the other hand, the survey shows that implementation of RFID technology is increasingly considered a burning platform for companies. So one can conclude that the percepted value of RFID must be increasing. That in itself is a good sign for the RFID industry.

Of course, this does not take away the fact that the industry needs RFID experts. It is very important to give professionals the opportunity to increase their skill and knowledge about RFID, not only on-the-job but also via courses and trainings. People development again proves to be vital. Just like Accenture does for its workforce and clients, companies should offer concrete learning opportunities to bring the performance of their people to higher levels.

It is good to see that RFID more and more becomes a concrete improvement opportunity for many companies. The market will surely adopt to the heavy demand this puts on knowledgable professionals. In any case, if you’re struggling with finding the right skillset for your company, don’t hesitate to contact those that can help in delivering or building these skills.