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Europe on the agenda for EPCglobal
RFID/EPC in textile industry in Germany
RFID/EPCglobal in Europe 2006 Congress & Exhibition
With EPCglobal gathering pace, it was recognised that Europe needed to ensure that its needs were fully represented and aligned. The European Adoption Programme (EAP), co-chaired by Juup Willemse (Unilever) and Gerd Wolfram (MGI METRO Group Information Technology), was formed to manage this process.
There are several challenges faced by the EAP. A mix of cultures, languages, business processes and market structures mean that Europe is much more diverse than the US. There is a risk that, due to the make-up of Europe, different countries and organisations could develop different approaches to RFID with different timelines.
The EAP is tasked with ensuring that GS1 MOs within Europe work consistently and collaboratively. In addition, the EAP feeds into and provides strong end user input into a range of GS1 groups, including the European EPCglobal Programme (EEP) and the European Working Group (EWG).
EAP deliverables include:
- Promoting the European bandwidth regulations, including the production of a report for the EU entitled ‘User requirements for European RFID regulations’ for the EU
- Producing a summary of the approaches and plans of European retailers
- Producing a summary of the availability of EPCglobal Gen2 readers and tags in Europe
- Developing a list of critical issues
- Organising user participation in the ‘TG34’ work group chaired by JohnFalck, which developed a set of ETSI guidelines for companies installing RFID in Europe
Over the last few months Unilever, Intel, Accenture, Cap Gemini, IBM and GS1 Spain have sponsored EAP meetings to great success. The objectives of the meetings are to:
- Disseminate updates from EPCglobal
- Learn about the issues and challenges faced by European end-users and agree actions to resolve them
- Enable information exchange between organisations implementing EPC
- Encourage the adoption of EPCglobal standards by those considering implementing RFID
In the future, the EAP will expand its scope from FMCG to include industries such as healthcare, logistics, apparel and aerospace to provide a regional approach to the development and implementation of EPCglobal.
The textile and garment industry will be, behind the pharmaceutical industry, one of the first to adopt the RFID technology on item level. "This is a historical chance using RFID and anti-theft device on item level in apparel, fashion and footwear industry today”, the steering committee "RFID/EPC in textile and garment industry” of GS1 Germany declared in December 2005. Since then a significant progress in winning full subscribers of EPCglobal was made. Until now Esprit, Kaufhof, Karstadt, Gerry Weber, Triumph, Gardeur, Windsor, Meyer & Meyer and DHL as logistic service provider signed the EPC contract.
Business cases from Gardeur and Marks & Spencer demonstrated the efficiency of the adoption of RFID. Since the Steering Committee exists the tag prices decreased more than 50%.
By further development of the RFID Technology, especially in this sector, we expect more strong partners in the RFID/EPC network this year.
Tecnogestión 2008
Guía europea EPC para fabricantes y distribuidores