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Bob McDonald, chief operating officer of Procter & Gamble, gave a great keynote presentation at the RFID Live conference in Las Vegas last week, on P&G’s journey towards adopting radio frequency identification technology.
McDonald talked about the coming together of P&G and Gillette, which had each been pursuing their own RFID strategies, and how the separate teams were able to combine their learning. He then went on to do what many in the business are reluctant to do – grade the industry’s progress on RFID to date.
On the positive side, McDonald gave efforts to develop RFID standards an A-, a grade that members of RFID standards body EPCglobal can takes some pride in achieving. On the not so positive side, McDonald gave Retailer Engagement, that is the level at which retailers have adopted and made use of RFID technology, a mere C+. “There is promise but just not a lot of real traction,” McDonald concluded. And in the category of Shared Value Creation, that is the degree to which both sides of the RFID equation benefit – retailers and suppliers – McDonald awarded a C- grade. “A passing grade because we’ve seen some promise, but there is still a lot of work to be done. If you fail to get engagement, you can’t unlock the shared value creation,” he said.
Clearly there is still a significant amount of progress that needs to be made before RFID will live up to its promise, but I will offer my own observation, or report card. I’ve had the opportunity to attend the RFID conference over the past few years and based on the presentations I was able to take in, the technology is definitely gaining momentum. In the past, companies have primarily talked about the pilots or trials they were conducting to find out if the technology worked and how it could best be leveraged. This year, I was able to speak with several companies that were undertaking full-fledged deployments, and realizing substantial benefits.
So, from a momentum standpoint, I’d give RFID a solid B.
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