Building a Global RFID Network Simulator John Williams Director, MIT Auto ID Lab As RFID tagged goods move through the supply chain the users of the supply chain need a mechanism to record business events and data associated with a particular Electronic Product Code (EPC) and to discover and query such data registered by others. This paper describes a Global RFID Network Simulator, called a Realm, for coordinating one or more supply chains, allowing the users to both publish and subscribe to events and to launch queries against the aggregated data. The simulator can simulate components, such as readers or a distribution center, or can take in live data from a reader or DC. The Realm provides a number of services to support machines registered in the Realm, including middleware for message routing and coordination and resource management. The Realm also provides an integrated web service interface between supply chain users and the computing resources within the Realm. It can be viewed as providing statefull Grid Web Services to the user. The computational resources include code provisioning, CPU cycles, file storage, device management, such as RFID Reader management, as well as utilities, such as fault handling and garbage collection. RFID Global Standardization Issues, Challenges, Opportunities Michael Guillory Principal, Strategic Action Consulting Services (SACS), USA RFID is an exciting technology with the potential to have a tremendous impact on the open global supply chain. It is clear that for the effective use of this technology in such broad applications as transportation, logistics, asset management, aviation, defense, health care, automotive, etc. that standardization is a necessary ingredient. There has been much hype and confusion regarding the various efforts to promote RFID technology as well as focus its development through global standards. This presentation will detail the current "state of the world" regarding the various standardizations efforts (e.g. ISO and EPCglobal). The issues confronting the market will be defined along with the challenges for the industry. A clear understanding of the opportunities this exciting technology offers will be matched to the existing and developing global standards. RFID Trend and Cases in the Electronic and Distribution Industry - The actual RFID Application condition in Supply Chain - Jung-Wook Kim Senior Manager, Accenture Seoul Office Recently the leading distribution enterprises in Europe are redoubling their efforts to apply RFID, just as the major U.S distribution companies such as WalMart or BestBuy did so 3 or 4 years ago. To cope with the increasing demand on RFID of the major distribution companies of U.S and Europe, Japanese leading electronic companies, especially Toshiba and Sony, have decided to keep pace with this trend, and actively carried out various activities such as actual Implementation Project to formulate the specific strategy plan, which have been verified by Pilot. The leading electronic enterprises in Korea, too, have been monitoring this trend closely, and hurriedly planning for applying RFID to the practical industry such as Tracking in Distribution section, Property Management, antitheft, etc. Accenture is one of the global leading companies in RFID area and I am now introducing you to the project and relevant information about the movements of the industry focusing primarily on the RFID cases applied to Supply Chain in the global Electronic and Distribution industry. EPC Networking Standards of the communication, storage and analysis of RFID event data across trading partner boundaries Christian C. Clauss Worldwide Auto-ID Leader, IBM, Switzerland RFID holds tremendous potential for enabling valuable systems for automatic product traceability, counterfeit detection, diversion detection, etc. however, many of these use cases require that RFID event data be shared with trading partners and government regulators. Mr. Clauss manages a team in IBM that is using the emerging EPC Information Services standards to securely enable companies to communicate, store, and analyze EPC event data with trading partners and regulators. He will discuss how the largest retailers in the world are automatically sending RFID product movement data directly to their suppliers for analysis. He will discuss how pharmaceuticals companies are using the EPC Networking standards to create traceability networks that enable these companies to create safe and secure supply chains by sharing product movement data to create digitally signed electronic pedigrees. These pedigrees detail each significant event of the life of RFID tagged drugs as they move from manufacturer to wholesaler to pharmacy to hospital. Prospects of RFID Chips and Tags Status, outlook and trends for RFID standards and products Josef Preishuber-Pfluegl CTO, BU Manager RFID+RF Comm, CISC Semiconductor GmbH, Austria Starting with the history of RFID product and standard development this session will contain a status summary of both RFID product and standard development with focus on RFID tags and RFID tag ASICs, and some relating aspects of readers and interrogators. Furthermore, this session will cover outlook and trends in RFID standards and product development, especially driven by the learning from the application design, as well as the creation of new market requirements through customers who get used to the technology. Standardization issues will cover both the ISO/IEC history, as well as the EAN.UCC/GTAG and GS1/EPCglobal history, its current status and recent developments that have influence on / are influenced from product, application and system design. On the part of product development this will cover early product designs from various companies, as well as the first products according to the ISO/IEC 18000 standards and continuing with ISO/IEC 18000-6 Type C / EPCglobal Class 1 Generation 2 and the next steps to accomplish based on these platforms. Driving the Ubiquitous Importance of Ultra Small RFID & its Application -How RFID Solutions can meet the Customer Requirements- Ryo IMURA, PhD Executive Managing Director Mu-Solutions Div., Hitachi, Ltd., JAPAN (Professor of the University of Tokyo) Electronic coding of products and documents using RFID backed by the Ubiquitous computing brings new business and secure life styles. The world smallest wireless silicon IC ".I-Chip" storing a unique 128 bits ROM ID code number has been developed for a reliable automatic identification through the network based secure ID management. The unique ID number can be used and applied for an authentication process of each individual item. This paper introduces the current practical RFID application and system solutions for the innovation of secure ticketing system, counterfeit prevention, brand management, manufacturing, distribution, tracking & tracing, recycling of the products and supply chain management (SCM). UHF RFID Chip R&D Status ETRI's Passive RFID Chips Kyung H. Park Senior Engineer, Basic Research Laboratory Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Korea ETRI has been developing UHF RFID Chips for passive tag and passive readers since last year. We present ETRI's R&D status about the UHF RFID Chips. The UHF RFID Chip for passive tag consists of analog circuit, control logic, and non-volatile memory. Here, the control logic is tightly dependent on the air interface protocol. But the international standard which defines the detailed air interface protocol is not fixed yet. Hence, ETRI manufactured two kinds of tag chips which are following ISO 18000-6B and EPC Gen.2 (Draft) specification first. For now, ISO 18000-6C is the most likely international standard. ETRI is monitoring how the international standard changes and, simultaneously, developing the tag chip with the latest EPC Gen.2 specification which is identical with ISO 18000-6C. The UHF RFID Chip for passive reader consists of RF/analog circuit and baseband logic & processors. The RF/analog circuit can be used in common whether ISO 18000-6 or EPC Gen.2 will be adapted as the international standard. That makes ETRI develop RF/analog IC first. The RF/anlog chip being developed by ETRI will be presented. On the other hand, digital IC would be developed right after the international standard is fixed, since the baseband logic & processors are also tightly dependent on the international standard's air interface protocol.