Mike Graen discusses the power of serialized data in RFID and what it helps unlock for businesses. Joining Mike are:

• Myron Burke | CEO, Founder & Principal
• Senthilkumar CP | Director of Research & Technology, Auburn University RFID Lab
• Jonathan Gregory | Director - Industry Engagement, GS1 US

Greetings. My name is Mike Graen. It's a pleasure

to welcome you to the SCMRC Leadership Podcast hosted by the

University of Arkansas Supply Chain Department and

Conversations on Retail. Today, I'm really excited to speak with

a couple of industry experts actually three industry experts

in the RFID space. And we're not going to talk about RFID how it

works, or the fact that it is the line of sight and no issues

is out. We're going to talk about a topic called the ID in

RFID. What does that mean? That means every RFID tag at retail

actually has two pieces of information, the UPC of the

product and a unique serial number. Most companies don't

really take advantage of that serial number. There's new

capability that I think will be very interesting to people on

the podcast about how you can use that serialized data for

many, many things inside the retail supply chain. Please join

me with Myron Burke, Senthilkumar CP and Jonathan

Gregory. And they're going to be talking to us about the ID in

RFID. Let's get started. Well, hello, my name is Mike Graen.

Welcome to another version of the retail supply chain

initiative. We are really excited today to talk a little

about about the ID in RFID. And I'm shamelessly stole that from

Myron. Myron shared that a little snitbit with me a little

while ago, probably a month or so ago, he thought we'd never

brought it bring it up again. But he doesn't know when he says

something, I typically write it down and come back to it. So be

careful, Myron, be careful. So let's go ahead and introduce the

panel that we've got here today and then I'll kind of a couple

opening comments and then we're just going to dive into the

topic. So Myron, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself

first.

You bet. Good morning, good afternoon,

wherever you may be. Myron Burke, I spent 26 years with

Walmart, in emerging technologies, part of the

numerous launches of RFID. Now I have my own company, Divergent

Technology Advisors, where I advise businesses on technology

integration and strategy.

Excellent, thank you. And you spent quite a bit

of time as an operator in Sam's and Walmart as well, including

just getting some international work in Japan, which is a great

segue into Senthil, where are you right now and let you

introduce yourself and tell me where you are located my friend.

Hey, thanks. Thanks, mate. Thanks for having me. My

name is Senthil, I'm the Director of Research and

Technology at the RFID lab at Auburn University. Here in

Japan, for the week, but couldn't miss this event. So I'm

here dialing in late, so happy to be here. Been with the lab

for both 15, 16 years now, it's about at this point, been with

the lab since 2007. Have been part of all the major projects

that the lab has worked in over the years in retail, in food, in

aviation and healthcare, and all those new industries that are

coming up. And thanks again for having me.

Absolutely. And just a little bit of a a integration

point here. So Myron Burke, you spent at least three years in

Japan? Is that correct?

We spent just just a hair over three years in Tokyo

with a company called Seiyu which is now owned by Rakuten.

Rakuten was our online delivery fulfiller at the time and so we

did bopis and delivery many many many years ago so it's sort of

second life living through some of that.

So give him one place that he must eat before he

comes back home come on give him.

You have to go to Andy's, Andy's in Itubani.

Seafood, goes to the market every day, buys it, he's a

British guy. He owns the upstairs, his wife runs

downstairs. Crab legs with English vinegar is gonna be one

of the best things on the menu they have their own sochu. So,

you have to go to Andy's

Okay.

What's what's what's hilarious is Senthil, the light

showing up which basically means you're Googling it while he did

that.

I'm making a note of it. Just to make sure my, you

know, I can forget everything that happens in this call today,

but not that.

So here's the deal the train system there when I

lived there the train system was incredible you can get anywhere

so don't just because it looks like it's a far away away

doesn't mean it is

It's not far and the train like literally you'll

take the, you can take the subway actually there.

Cinichubody and then you'll actually come up right

underneath the elevated train and Andy's is like a hundred

steps from where you come off the train. It's easy. Now that

it is a hundred vertical steps, so don't confuse that.

Gets a chance to work up the appetite.

Well, we'll speak after this because we could go

on and on food forever.

I want to hear about the karaoke too. But yeah.

Big box karaoke in any corner in the country.

Hilarious. All right. I don't know how to

segue. I'll say Mr. Gregory, you want to go ahead and introduce

yourself to segue away from this quickly, please?

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Great to be here. So yeah,

Jonathan Gregory, with GS1 US. I have a job that I thoroughly

love because I get to support industry and advance RFID

standards and adoption use. So I've been with the company about

three and a half, almost four years now and before that was

deploying RFID solutions in first in aerospace, and then in

retail for a total of about 13 years. So I come into this with,

you know, that hands on program manager experience as well as

even before that another decade with work with E commerce and

ERP. Have worked on the largest Edelstein, largest ERP solution

in the world. So, so I come into this with a sense of like, the

data flows and the processes, as well as kind of the

implementation challenges and things that you have to do to,

to prove out a proof of concept to pilots, or allow those types

of things. So very excited to be here.

Perfect, perfect. Well, we're excited to have this

conversation as well. And we've all been, we did a panel a few

weeks ago at the Auburn RFID board meeting. And I think many

of us have been Jonathan, you were not on that panel, but you

should have been because you've been in the space about 20 years

like the rest of us. So we've been doing this for a long time.

One of the things that I definitely want to kind of focus

on is a little bit, this is a title that Walmart, that Myron

came up with when then when we were talking about Walmart a

while back, which is the ID of ID in RFID. So, RFID stands for

radio frequency identification, we often talk about the RF part,

no line of sight, quit up some servers have to edit that out

later, but you have to you basically have the ability to be

able to do things line of sight, and you don't have to worry, you

know, have to worry about that all that stuff. But there's a

bigger value, which I think is we don't take advantage of is

the actual serialization. So before we get into this thing,

Jonathan, I'm going to ask you, if you are going to explain to

your family, what is the difference between a UPC, a G-10

14, and a SG-10. Now, because the reason I'm saying that is

because there are some people out here who already get that,

Myron's laughing, but if you had to explain it to your family in

a way they could understand it, how would you do that?

Without their eyes glazing over? Okay, so

I'm laughing because first of all, you got to

get through the four acronyms before you can ever define what

you see as kids like, what is that mean?

My dad sells numbers. Yeah. UPC is a data

carrier, right? It was the barcode. It's in just one

standards lingo. This, it isn't the number it is the carrier of

the number, if you will, the UPC holds the G-10. The G-10 is the

Global Trade Item number that is the product identifier. That

G-10 is made up of a GS-1 company prefix, which is

licensed and so as well as what's called an item reference.

But what that does is it ensures that each UPC has a unique

identity because the company prefix is licensed. So you can

go to any one any organization. GS-1 Japan for example where

Senthil is or or France or GS-1 US or what have you. There GS-1

office around the world where you can say alright, I want to I

want to purchase a license for just one company prefix. And

that gives you have a globally unique value that ensures that

your products not only are uniquely identified but also

there's a registry where they point back to us so anybody can

look up, who's who owns this product, who manufactured it, oh

this goes back to such and so company. That is the product

identifier is the G-10. Now the SG-10, the serialized G-10, is

the instance or item identifier. So if I want to distinguish

between, you know, this shirt and another shirt of the same

style, color, size, for example, they would have the same G-10,

the same product ID, but they'd have a different serial number.

And so that gives me, that unlocks that item level

visibility, which is really what we're talking about here, right?

It's an enormous turning point really a big unlock for all

sorts of applications which I think we'll explore.

Yep. So summarizing, a UPC identifies the company and

the item, and an SG-10 it basically does the same thing

but assigns a unique serial number to every single selling

unit at the item level, right? So if that shirt that you're

wearing, if there's 10 of them, they're all have the same UPC or

G-10, 14. They will all have a different SG-10. So they will

have a UPC and a serial number linked to them. Perfect.

That's right. That's right.

So if I'm out there listening to this, Myron, and

I'm going well, so what what does that do, because when I

think about the way most people use RFID, lets just talking

about RFID without the, without the, without the not the 2d

barcode portion of this. When I think about how people use that,

they use that serialized information that R this SG-10 to

count the number of unique items I've found. And go, I just found

50 of these particular items. They all have the same UPC, but

they have the different SG-10, so update the on hand to be 50.

And that's the way they leverage that, throw away all that

serialized data. I don't need that for anything. Talk to us

about why that's an opportunity, that's, that's a missed

opportunity to take advantage of that unique data from a business

perspective.

Yeah, I think I think the easiest way to sort of

wrap your head around this is to think about, you can pick social

security numbers, driver's licenses, or I like to use

fingerprints, because they're unique, and harder to copy. So

you put a serial number into an EPC tag, you'd lock it, somebody

could go manufacture if they wanted to, you could do a

photograph of a fingerprint and do some things with that. But

it's difficult. It takes a lot of energy to do that. But as as

we have unique fingerprints, the correlation to hey, I'm going to

read a bunch of serial numbers on RFID tags coming into my

business environment warehouse, back room, front of store, POS,

walking out the exit. So I collect all these fingerprints,

is like the FBI having a database of fingerprints. And

then all of a sudden saying, Oh, at the end of the month, we're

just going to throw everything we collected away. So anybody

who is a bad actor that you might find the residual

fingerprint on and compare to your database, you've just said,

you know what, that database really isn't important to me. So

think of any product that could have a action happen upon it,

whether it gets pulled off the shelf for store use, it gets

thrown away by somebody who's just pissed off at a decision

their manager made and said, I'll show you and throw a case

of Cokes in the dumpster. Somebody who walks out the front

door with it from a theft perspective, or their shrink of

a different format that says hey, I miscounted, you know, six

cases of product A as product B when I was doing my my my data

entry, or editing a field, I fat fingered something. But I'm

going to throw all that serial number information away that

says I now have no historical view to go back and look at what

happened. And I think that's what the serialization

regardless of the data carrier format gives you is the ability

to know this can of Coke versus that can of Coke and then what

actions have happened to that can of Coke. And it's a term we

came up with years ago Mike of state and status of an item at a

unique item attribute level to understand. If you get an

electronics example, this was one I use a lot was if I pull a

TV out of a box to put it on a shelf as a display item that's

still in my inventory as a count of one. But I'll probably throw

the box away or may keep the box in the backroom because a year

from now when I change out those electronics displays, I'm going

to sell that product at a discounted cost, discounted

retail, let me say. So if I'm doing an online availability

offering to my clients, and I get down to one, well that one

is my display item. I don't want to sell that one if I've got

more on order, because then I've got to open another one and put

it on display. So being able to say this serial number is the

display, I want to block the sale or the inventory adjustment

on that serial number so no one can take that out of my

inventory in any way. So when I get to in essence one, what I'm

showing online is zero. So my online inventory is zero is one

minus zero or zero plus one, but I don't show that one because I

don't want to sell that. And so that's where it has financial

implications and service implications to customers.

Because if they think you have one you show up and it's a

display they're like, I don't want to display. Why didn't you

tell me that?

Yeah, I think the other the other example we've

given before is, when a customer returns something, that

typically comes back into inventory. So if I've returned

it because it doesn't work, and it's going back into claims, now

I've got two TVs, one's hanging on a on a display, which is not

available for sale, the other one sitting in the claims

department, because we think there's something wrong with it.

My on hand would show two, but really, I have zero available

for sale. So you're saying leveraging that unique serial

number tied to a product can actually provide an inventory

state in other words.

It does and this concept of state and status gets

really big really fast, because it's based off of the amount of

inventory I have, but where is that? And what is the

availability of a status of that inventory? One of the big things

we learned years ago was an average shop trip, say it's

let's say it's 35 minutes, well, if somebody picks up that

product, call it the TV, puts it in their cart walks around with

it, that's still in my physical inventory till they go through

point of sale. But it's not available to sell to somebody

else, it's committed to a customer in the store and will

be for 35 minutes. So when that becomes comes off the shelf and

start moving around in a virtual cart, I want to show my online,

I want to take one down, because I can't sell that one twice. The

same thing, if someone puts it in their cart online, I want to

take it down from the viewable inventory. If they pay for it,

but they're gonna pick it up later, now I want to make sure

I've taken it down, and I reserved that serial number for

Mr. Michael Graen, because that's gonna sit on the shelf

until an associate comes and gets it. And I don't know how

long that might be so I don't want to double sell Mike Graen's

TV, because I've already sold it once. So you know, there's a

really complex world created with the omni channel if we can

still use that term environment, and not understanding the state

and status of inventories and how you deal with that in real

time.

I have a question. You know, with both of you, Mike and

Yep.

Myron being involved in retail for a long time. You know, we're

talking about ID, we're talking about state and status and all

that, you know, we have this unique ID that is part of

ASG-10. But before this became, you know, even an option that we

are, you know, talking about today, how was state and status

handled retail, was that an option at all?

It really wasn't. No, it wasn't an option at all.

It was something we coined out of work on annual inventories,

working the TV display example was one of the real drivers of

sort of coining that term of a state and status strategy, you

know, gosh, probably like in 2009. Because you had to go look

at it. And when you're doing you know, if you've worked with a

Washington or any those inventory services group,

they'll put stickers and tickets on things that they've counted.

And you'll have a pre count ticket for a display, say, hey,

I'm gonna put this in a pre count and count all these in

advance, or I'll have a do not inventory ticket. Well,

sometimes when you post audit that you'll find out oh, we put

a DNI on something that should have been pre counted, or we

didn't pre count this or somebody actually counted it

twice. And so there was a lot of human error. Because if you did

the pre counts, but I was doing the physical count, we didn't

talk, I may come by and count all those displays, not knowing

you've already counted them. So they're all the data synthesis

from that type of observational interaction happened after the

inventory work was done, and then you had to go back and

spend 24 hours auditing auditing it, and reconciling and what's

called reconciliation process. So what we're trying to do is

say, hey, let's put the audit reconciliation into the actual

data flow. And if I see that serial number from two different

sources, I can know that's been double counted at two different

time and date stamps. Then if you put geolocation into it, you

can know geolocation, login ID to user device, I can say oh,

that came off two different computers at two different times

on the same day, you know, and we, we influenced our inventory.

So so adding this use case to the receiving choke points

between is it a transportation problem, like is somebody

pilfering my trucks? Do I have a DC in, DC out problem? Do I have

a store in, store out problem. I can find out where my

discrepancies are happening, and then go investigate where the

problem process is with this state and status theory. And I

get visibility to what has sold and walked out the front of the

store so now I can look at true walk out shrink versus paper

shrink or process shrink. Then if somebody brings something

back, I know, hey, did we sell that at the store? Did we sell

that at this company? Did that come from a different company?

Is it returned sellable, I'll put it back into inventory

immediately. Is it claims as Mike was talking about, it goes

to the back room and it's defective, so I can block that

from future sales. So if I read that on the sales floor, or at

POS, I can send an alert to say, hey, this is a non sellable

item. Let's take it back to the floor and I can measure

performance metrics on how long it takes to do that, you can go

as deep as you want. Right now, we're still on level one, which

is inventory accuracy. But if you throw away that data and

don't run the serial number through your systems and store

that, you lose the ability to do all of these extended use cases

that deliver extreme value from a tag that you're already paying

for just to get a count, and that's where the leverage of

this technology comes in. And whether it become a 2D barcode,

and the new digital link standard with Sunrise 2027,

which allows you to have a serial number and a barcode that

is the same serial number in the EPC. So I don't have to read it

at POS, I can actually scan it at POS and say, oh, that serial

number product, whether it's a barcode or an EPC was scanned at

POS so I know it was sold. So now I can reconcile both from

the human readable and the RF readable. So we've been you

know, that standard is a big unlock for the state and status

capabilities across the GS-1 standard from case and case or

pallet case, interpack item all the way through that level,

having that digital link capability to the 2D barcode.

And question because it kind of pulled it all together.

Yeah, just to build on that, Senthil, state and

status didn't become a high priority until you decided to

fix everybody's on hands. Because when your inventory was

50% accurate, you really didn't need to on hand a state and

status because they're so screwed up anyway. We were just

guessing and putting buffers in and all that kind of stuff. Now

we've got our inventories closer to 100%, I won't say 100%, but

closer to 100%. Now suddenly, I'm down to I've got two TVs,

are they really available for sale or not? So that's what this

piece has become. Jonathan, I want to switch to you real

quick, because I think this is while this is, this is not a

GS-1 question, you've also been spending quite a bit of time on

the whole claims process, right. And so leveraging that

serialized data is a potential unlock for claims elimination,

or at least, you know, be able to resolve those claims issues,

right. Because the old days, I shipped you a hundred, well, I

only got fifty. Well, I shipped you a hundred and back and

forth, back and forth. How could potentially people use this

extended SG-10 information to discuss, debate, or have

evidence that says a claim is a legitimate claim, or it's not.

It might just you know, my internet connection

is now unstable, so you cut out, but I got the end of your

question. So I'm gonna catch up, but your claims compliance and

the leveraging of item level serialized data within claims

compliance? Is that correct?

Correct. Correct.

Okay

So, how can you use SG-10 information to help reduce

the claims between the supplier and retailer?

Gotcha. So you know, the prior conversation was

very interesting. I'd like to start with a certain observation

and carry it forward into this, if I could. So what Myron was

talking about was the value of serialized data, right, and

there are multiple points of value. One of one of the more

kind of basic observations is that I can barcode scan a UPC

barcode five times the same thing. And I can misrepresent

accidentally or on purpose that I have five of these items

instead of just one, right? Whereas a serialized barcode or

RFID is going to is going to give me no, there's no chance of

over counting, right. And so and the same is true, we've seen in

in factory settings where somebody is placing items, let's

say t-shirts or something into a case of carton to ship and there

have been observations about barcode scanning of those items

as they flow into that carton, right. And that sometimes the

individual, if it's getting close to noon and the trucks at

the door and we need to get moving, they'll scan the same

barcode because you'll see the timestamp, right. Barcode,

Barcode, Barcode, Barcode, Barcode, you know, right away,

okay, this person was just getting it out the door. And

what we've seen is that there's a significant labor savings

simply by having an RFID reader scan those or if you don't want

to go with RFID reader to Myon's point, you could use a 2D

barcode that leverages, gives you that item level information,

that serialized data, so that I know exactly what global,

globally unique identity of each item within each case carton.

That's really interesting, because when I do that, that's

an unlock for claims compliance. So now, the factory can report

to the brand owner say, hey, these are the specific items

that you should be able to expect in this case carton.

That's a big unlock, that that is an unlock at many levels,

both operationally, simply being able to read those tags at line

speed as they flow through, hey, I read all the tags that they

reported, that's helpful, but also from a claims perspective.

Oh, we didn't receive all the items. Okay, well, here are the

serialized items that I reported sending to you. Can you tell me

know which one of these you did not receive, have not read? Oh,

you know what, now we did find them. That's interesting, right?

And so what we're doing is we're systematizing something that's a

very laborious and time intensive and kind of painful

process in that context.

Yeah. Well, you got proof. You know when I was with

P&G and Myron's with Walmart, I shipped you 20. Well, I only got

10. Well I shipped you 20. I mean, we have no data to

basically say what we usually ended up doing and say, fine,

we'll just cut it in half, and I'll pay you the money on the

claims of that. Now, I have the ability to say, no, here are the

20 unique serial numbers I put in that box. You go scan your

system somewhere and if you got any of these 20, you got them. I

don't know what happened in your receiving process, but you got

them or you didn't get them.

You know, Mike, there's a there's an interesting

step behind that that Jonathan was talking about that starts to

get unlocked with this as well. Which is if you can show what I

shipped, and what you received, match. Then you start to unlock

visibility into another black box, which is PO substitutions

or approved short shipped authorizations that don't get

keyed back into SAP in the enterprise systems because it's

an email from account rep to buyer or buyer to account rep.

And so we've seen some things with a PO substitution, where

it's like, oh, I ordered 100 green shirts, assorted small,

medium and large. You shipped me 75 green and 25 blue. Yes, I

shipped those because two weeks ago, buyer Betty and nobody

named Betty in particular, just random name. Buyer Betty said

she would rather us get the 100 units so they approved 25 via

email, we stuck them in there to meet the must arrive by date. So

as you see pressure on these other metrics like must arrive

by date and ship in full and different things like that, you

see a lot of process decision exceptions that don't always get

re keyed into the system. The PO gets approved for a

substitution, but we don't go edit the PO because that

triggers a lot of other paperwork in the enterprise

platform and we just want to get the inventory there to serve the

customer. All the right goals, but because of the way systems

work, it creates other opportunities that, you know, we

don't know how many times that approval is being given to

modify a PO without the right entry points.

And I would just add to that, that you

highlight another point is that say grey market tracking. So by

having serialized data, I can now say, Oh, this is

interesting, this item I shipped it to this distributor, but I

find it in this new market, right. And so so that's another

unlock, again, regardless of the data carrier, regardless of if

it's RFID or barcode based, and we'll talk later potentially

about Sunrise 2027 and the advent of 2D barcodes for

consumers are using sick QR codes to investigate to look at,

look up product information. And that's a rich data source of

both for grey market and as well as product authenticity,

authenticity.

And there is a lot of projects, you know, that are

happening at you know, a lot of brands and a lot of suppliers to

address this problem at you know, whether it is grey market

counter bidding, and they get stood up as traceability

projects, independent RFID. And at some point, they all realize,

hey, we have this thing called RFID on all of our products, and

that has a unique ID that's already part of the item, right?

So why are we building something from scratch, right? And having

two unique IDs when, you know, we're struggling to make use of

one. And that's pretty much a common theme that we are seeing

in some of the recent deployments with RFID is, as

these deployments grow and mature we're seeing, you know, a

group that's working on traceability for, you know, n

number of use cases, you know, come in to the RFID project who

is doing RFID primarily for inventory accuracy, and they're

using the uniqueness in the RFID more as a requirement so that

they can differentiate tags where they're reading them. But

then they, they realize that they have each other and we're

seeing a lot more collaboration in a lot of areas at this point.

So,

So Senthil, just throwing out a number, let's

just say there's a hundred RFID implementations at retail. Okay,

hundred, I'm sure there's many more, but let's just say there's

a hundred. How many of them are actually leveraging this

serialized data versus really just throwing away that

serialized data and use it to be a counting machine? And I don't

want to share any confidential information about what you know

because you know a lot more about what's going on the

industry. But is the industry starting to take advantage of

this unique data source or is it still just I'm just using it to

get my own hands right?

So majority of them are, there are a few deployments

who have had traceability as part of their foundational use

case that have used it from day one, there are even bands who

have generated these IDs and track them through the supply

chain, but that's more of an exception than normal despite.

They have pretty much everyone that, you know, has adopted RFID

scale at this point, has started with inventory accuracy as the

primary metric, as we all know. And when we look at inventory

accuracy to Myron's point earlier, there are even if they

wanted to, you know, make use of these uniqueness, the systems

that they had didn't support a lot of these, you know, the

concept of state didn't exist, right? The concept of uniqueness

didn't exist. So they were all, I think, trying to solve the

inventory accuracy, which is a burning problem. So they all

took, you know, this rich data of I have these hundred unique

numbers, but my current system can only handle things at a

quantity level. So I'm going to compress them as a hundred units

rather than a hundred unique units and plug it into an

existing system. And a lot more work needs to happen now that

you know, this data is available is you know, in going now and

building those systems. So we're seeing a lot more of that

happening now that inventory is being addressed as they think

about second order use cases in retail. But it's moving in the

right direction, but not as fast as it should be.

Well, one more question on this for all three

of you, and then I want to get into the Sunrise 2027

opportunity. My sense, is legacy systems, that's a big broad

term, right. SAP systems, MRP systems, Jonathan, even the

traditional EDI platforms that we have today, don't do a real

good job of handling that additional lower level of

detail, which is the serialized. Is that, do you guys think that

that's going to be one of the major stumbling blocks to

finally I mean, we can certainly do some pilots, but if you want

to plug this into a platform of moving products throughout the

supply chain, those systems don't have that data in it. How

big of a barrier is that?

Oh, go ahead Senthil.

Got to get to bed. So I think that's probably the

biggest barrier at this point, especially for anyone operating

at scale. Everybody understands the value behind it. Everybody

sees the you know, the use cases that could be enabled, if we

could trace this uniquely, not only at a given point, but

across the supply chain, but if we look at our all of our

systems right now, they're all built to you know, manage things

at a quantity level. You know, at a single point, and more

importantly, as the data flows through the supply chain, right,

so we are not even close. So a lot of the systems are being

built at this point. But I think that's where, you know,

improvement and technology, the availability of computing and,

you know, resources that we are seeing in the industry is

helping us, you know, catch up.

Yep. Jonathan?

Yeah, I would just add that. Yeah, I agree

with you Senthil. It requires middleware, right? It requires

this, this new software entity that's between all the data

what's happening in reality that your, say RFID readers are

reading and these corporate systems that don't operate

typically don't operate at a serialized level. So that

middleware tends to, you have to have these strategic decisions

that you make, well, how much business logic am I placing in

my middleware? You know, what is that line between operational

logic versus, you know, business core business logic, and am I

diverting or have a divergence between kind of the strategy of

my middleware and the strategy of my core systems. But then

that also seeps into, like you mentioned EDI, it seeps into how

do I communicate with my trade partners, right? Well, if I'm,

if I'm, if I'm operating at a product level, not an item

level, then obviously my EDI transaction or other

communications are going to operate at items levels, right,

as well, or product levels. So there's that element there. So

the sharing layer is one of the things we talked about claims

compliance earlier. That's, that's one of those

opportunities and barriers to overcome, because that requires

more than one party, like so a lot of RFID solutions, start in

the sales floor or in the in the store, because that's self

contained, right. You can control that environment and you

can very easily you know, pull out these use cases and rally

cases where you start sharing data with trade partners. Well,

that requires more coordination and therefore tends to lag

behind the other adoption use cases.

I think that I think the broader complexity

behind this, Mike, is you know, when you get into ERP and WMS

systems as well, that they are holistically once a day batch

programs, in some cases that are brilliantly designed twice a

day, you know, 12 hour shift type scenarios that say, and,

and I think we, we overuse the word real time in these

scenarios, because I'm not going to go change my massive WMS or

ERP deployment, it's just been put in. And I think maybe one

company has a plugin for some of this sort of real time

serialized data stuff out there today. But as retailers adopt

it, those big systems will evolve and have those

capabilities, and we need to be better prepared to describe the

functional use cases that need to be designed into those

because years ago, when you were ready, shipping and things like

you know, it was the old yellow pad that you started with, then

it became a form and then we digitize that form and scanned

it into computers and optical disk storage and things. So what

that cycle is not going to change we'll continue to evolve

in this but I think using those things as a what I'd call a

crutch or an excuse to say this is why we shouldn't do it. Well,

those systems won't be designed optimally until you start having

a robust set of how would you change your business data flows

using real time data and edge based middleware and firmware to

make decision logic to get that product to the customer better,

faster. Or maybe even, you could sell an out of stock to a

customer in the store at the shelf and have it dropped

shipped from the manufacturers warehouse to their home, and not

make them come back to the store at all and give them a really

great experience because you took care of an out of stock

situation and got it to their house in 48 hours or whatever,

it was a meaningful term. That's that's a use case that really

needs to be expanded and explored to capture the relevant

information because now it's not B2B, it's not P&G to Walmart, in

your example, earlier. It's it's a Walmart, it's P&G to a Walmart

customer at that customer's home. So now P&G needs different

information, which now gives them the ability to get some of

that customer shopper information, and do follow up

marketing things as well which enriches the whole data suite

and the lifetime value proposition to a brand.

Yep. Awesome. Well, we're going to transition to one

last topic. I mean, we can spend all day talking about this

stuff, but Senthil's gotta go to bed. So let's look so Senthil

for years, we have talked about the SG-10 being pure with no,

what I would call intelligent information in it. So it's got a

UPC and it's got a serial number, but we don't want to

assign any kind of intelligence to that serial number. We want

it to be a unique serial number. A lot of people have tried to

embed hey, can I put a date in there? Can I put this in there?

Can I put an attribute in there for that specific product? Maybe

it's when does this product get outdated or what is the DOT

number of that tire or what is the MEI number, I always say

that wrong, of that cell phone, etc. I believe we have an unlock

between I think with what Auburn and GS-1 are working on, which

is hey, we might be able to with this thing called EPC plus, and

maybe it's a linkage to Sunrise 2027 putting some additional

intelligence into an RFID tag so I don't have to go back to a

database for that attribute. So walk us through that may I may

have just blended two projects together. And if so, I'm sorry,

maybe Jonathan has a whole other podcast about 2027, but walk us

through what what you guys are thinking and what the industry

looks like, in terms of getting that information at RFID so you

can actually look at attribute data.

So right, so I think, you know, there are, you know, a

lot of products that we are tagging right now that don't

have anything other than the G-10, you know? So for those,

you know, adding

SG-10, right.

pre-RFID all they had was a G-10.

Oh G-10, got it, okay.

If you took a pair of denim, all they had was a, you

know, G-10. You know, so adding a serial number to it and making

an SG 10, you know, that's the best thing that could happen to

the pair of denim. But there is, you know, when you move beyond

apparel, when you move into new product categories, there are,

you know, additional, you know, sometimes serialized information

that are part of those products that exist already. So for

example, using your example of DOT number for tires or IME

numbers for cell phones, those have been, you know, used to

uniquely identify those products, even before G-10, you

know, became relevant to those products for various other use

cases. So I think one of the conversations we have been

having for the past 10 years is, how do we bring this together?

Right, you know, we have, we're creating a serial number, that

is part of SG 10, that is required to make RFID work. But

then we have this whole lot of other information that is

critical to the product, but exist in its own world, and may

not be readily accessible, you know, when it is needed. So I

think where we are having the conversations at this point is

trying to understand, is there value in adding that additional

information to be part of the SG-10 itself? So when you're

reading the SG-10, would it make sense to know or is there value

in knowing the IME number, at that point? Is there value

knowing the DOD number at that point? Right. And in use cases

where that makes sense, I think, a lot of effort that has been

put out by GS-1 in, in, you know, in updating the data

standard that they released, I think it was a month ago, I

think, enables or clarifies that, and has been building a

lot of awareness and education around it. So I think there's a

lot more to come. But I'll let Jonathan add, you know, some

more details to where we are and where we'll be headed.

Yeah, thanks, Senthil. Yeah, it's such a great

topic. So yeah, the TDS 2.0, the tag data standard of basically,

which governs how data is structured in an RFID tag,

right? That was updated August 2022. And what it allows you to

do is to add any what's called we call it an application

identifier, right? So an application identifier could be

a batch lot, it could be a date, like an expiration date, or

packed on date, could be a net weight, could be a country of

origin, right? Any, there's a whole library of AIs. So what

you can do is, you can now add that data much more easily than

you could have done in the past with an RFID tag, and you can

search on it as well. So what you can do is say, okay, like in

a food setting, like a, you know, foodservice retail grocery

setting, you could say, okay, I'm looking for all the tags

here that expire tomorrow, everybody who's expiring

tomorrow, raise your hand, right? And only those tags that

meet that criteria, will raise, will respond back to you, right.

So that's there's a lot of operational efficiencies that

this brings, and you think about in the apparel and general

merchandise space, like health and beauty items, we'll have a

batch lot in expiring so you know, how do I manage these

things so that I make sure that I'm not, you know, putting on

the sales floor, something that you know, somebody's not

supposed to purchase? And then another point is to like the

country of origin that that actually has an interest as it

relates to managing customs and tariffs. So if I sourced from

one country and shipped to another, then then it might be

more expensive than if I can prove that no, no I sourced from

this other country. So so it is a really exciting new

development, I think that the food and pharma spaces are the

are the kind of the most urgent, you know, need users, if you

will, of this new tag data standard, but it definitely has

applicability in the AGM space as well.

Awesome. Senthil, from your perspective, I cannot

do what he just described in a current 96 bit tag, right? We've

got to keep the SG 10 in bar. So what what is it from an art

perspective or a tag perspective, what are going to

be the physical requirements in the tag to be able to enable

that to happen?

So the most fundamental thing that you know is needed to

make it happen is we need a chip that can hold more data than 96

bytes, right. So and I think that is becoming more of a

reality, where with enough interest from industries beyond

apparel, we have seen solution providers taking that seriously

because the last time they had a higher memory chip that was, you

know, feasible for any retail application was, you know, 6, 7,

8 years ago, and they've not had a lot of innovation in that

space. But with use cases being, you know, requiring these higher

memory tags and GS-1 working on all the standards that make

those adoptions easier, that's becoming reality. So probably in

the next year or two, we'll see that becoming an option where

we'll have chips that can hold more data. And once that becomes

available, then there are going to be tags that are built using

those chips. And once that's done, we from a performance

standpoint, will make sure that those tags have the same

performance as the tags that we are using currently in retail so

that they don't, you know, interfere with the current

execution or the expectations of performance. And then once they

meet the requirements, we'll put it on the list and then people

can choose one versus the other based on their use case and

needs and they should be good to go.

Yeah, and just to clarify, if I have no interest

in this tag data standards 2.0 and this extended data for my

use case, the tags and the chips, etc. will, that I'm using

today, won't go away. That capability still exists only if

you want to take advantage of some of this other stuff. Well,

guys, we're at the end of the podcast, I want to give you guys

all kind of a thirty second wrap up. Any final thoughts that

you've got. We'll start with Myron.

Yeah, my my final thoughts would be is, you know,

whether you're looking at new tag data standards, or you're

looking at inventory accuracy, or any point in between is don't

don't just do what everybody else is doing, because they're

doing it. Really take the time to put, at least a small team

together to go into your business and understand what

data do we need? Where do we need it? What problem is it

solving? And with what speed and frequency do we need that,

right? Because you can build in some capabilities and some cost

or some some maybe some performance challenges that can

limit you, depending on what type of systems and data

infrastructure you have to do truly real time. So I think you

really got to step back and think about it and put some

things on paper with some decision logic and say, what

gets us in the game? What drives value for our company first, and

then where can we actually eliminate problems at the source

versus eliminate the symptoms of a problem. And I think that with

the ID part of a serialized inventory aspect is massively

powerful to an organization, if you really take the time to

understand what it can do for your business. Again, I compare

it to social security numbers with people or an FBI biometric

database with with profiling criminals or bad actors in the

world. It really gives you some some unique perspective.

Awesome, thank you, Myron. Senthil.

I like how Myron start, right, which is, at the end of

the day really comes down to the use case. It's not, you know,

technology in search of a problem. You know, I think we

have done that with RFID, where we have identified inventory

accuracy as the use case and, you know, used RFID to solve it.

Now, I think it's time to rethink it, again, now that we

have a unique ID that is more of an afterthought at this point.

You know, now understanding that is available, but not using it

for the sake of using it but trying to understand what does

it enable, what can we do with it, and what needs to happen,

you know, for for, for that to become a reality. And bring

everybody into the conversation, not within your own company, but

all your partners, whoever it is, you know, retailers,

suppliers, brand owners, technology providers, standards

bodies, and putting everybody's head together and creating a

roadmap of this is what we need, this is the data, this is the

value we can get out of it and forming a strategy so that we

can make the best use of it rather than just becoming

another POC that you know, makes it pretty slide deck.

Okay, well, we've had a chance to hear from a lot

of folks in their closing comments. Jonathan just want to

give you a chance, anything that we didn't cover or anything you

want to make sure the audience is aware of.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. So I just wanted to

highlight that standards drive interoperability, and

interoperability drives business agility. To think of standards

as another form of infrastructure just like we use

highways and, you know, online, you know, broadband and, and

phone systems and all that these are commerce standards. So why

wouldn't you want to be connected into that system of

standards that connects you with others and community and is

maintained as well. And to that end, that also my second and

final point would be to focus on connections. So starting within

your organization to be well connected with the different

organizational silos and interests within the

organization is talked about, you know, RFID solutions have to

work for everybody who touches them. So taking that into

account, having good cross functional mindset there, and

then not only inside your organization, but then think

about your industry and your supply chain. How might an RFID

solution relate to that? How are the standards being used across

your specific set of trade partners, and then finally,

across the entirety of the industry, and that's where GS-1

US can be helpful in providing connections basically,

workgroups and discussion groups and other types of forums for

the entirety of industry to come together. So yeah, those are my

final comments for you, Mike.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Senthil, I know

you, you get the farthest traveled award, to attend a

podcast all the way over in Japan. Thank you for your time,

Myron, as always and then Jonathan. great comments, great

summary close. I hope this has been helpful about the whole

idea of ID in RFID and we just thank you for your time today

and look forward to hearing on another podcast. I hope you

enjoyed that podcast about the ID in RFID. Many features many

capability which is a key unlock of leveraging that serialized

data. One of those that were mentioned in the podcast was the

ability to leverage RFID in the food part of the business to use

it for age inventory for product rotation for markdowns and some

things like that. Join us next time as Adam Anderson, Jonathan

Gregory and myself talk about this topic about leveraging the

actual RFID technology in the food area. I look forward to