BY ANIL SHRMA /ConsultantLearning Resource CentreIndian School of Business (ISB)GachibowliHyderabad -
Sanjay Sarma is a luminary credited with developing many standards and technologies that form the basis of the commercial RFID industry. RFID technology allows manufacturers, retailers, logistics providers and other organisations to "tag" physical goods with tiny radio transponders that can then be used to identify the goods without having to visually inspect them. This could mean a good deal of savings for companies annually. Popularly known as the 'father of RFID', he speaks to Professor N Viswanadham, Clinical Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies, about how he commenced on the idea of RFID, his research, and the results. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Professor N Viswanadham: Can you tell us how you got initiated into the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)?
Professor Sanjay Sarma: The credit for this idea goes, not to me, but my colleague David Brock. Earlier the entire data was put on the chip, which made it expensive. His idea to put the data on the network instead made us to look at the ways and means to do that. By putting the idea on a chip, how can you take advantage of it to make a two dollar tag a five cent tag? If you put the data on the network then what sort of bandwidth implications follow, and how do you locate this information. The real trigger was when David and I presented this concept in a couple of places, the chip persons thought it was impossible.
Professor Viswanadham: So how did you proceed?
Professor Sarma We perpetuated three or four years of aggressive research. We had to fundamentally question the way RFID tags were made and the way the protocols were designed. We started designing our own protocols. The next challenge was to find a start up company, because some of the big companies found us a threat to work with. We generated the first Gen one protocol, based on communication theory. We started with very small chips with regard the chip design and the chip manufacturing. On the software side we had to come up with protocols for finding the data and the repositories. Then we developed something called the Object Means System and we invented the concept of middleware because some of the software vendors found us threatening. That's when the middleware industry took off. We invented new data structures known as Physical Mark Up, and eventually it morphed into what we call EPCIS, which is offered by Wal-Mart
Professor Viswanadham: The 96 bit?
I am quite optimistic about RFID market. The market is bound to grow.
Professor Sarma: EPC was a 96 bit number. EPCIS is XLR schema for offering this data on the network. What followed were four or five years of brainstorming and coming up with concepts to solve problems, and these concepts were often out-of-the-box and radically different from anything the commercial industry was offering. One of the advantages of being in a place such as MIT is we are encouraged to say things that we think are right regardless of the resentment. Eventually people like Wal-Mart, Gillette, etc. supported us.
Professor Viswanadham: So when did you start this Auto ID Lab?
Professor Sarma David and I started it in 1998. By 1999 we were contacted by Kevin Ash from Procter & Gamble. He got excited about the project. I invited him to come and sit at MIT and help us out in getting other sponsors.. We got Gillette, then the Uniform Codes Council, the people who designed bar codes, and eventually Wal-Mart and Target also joined. So that's how we set the ball rolling. Now we have five labs with one operational in Cambridge.
Professor Viswanadham: What do these labs do? How do you see this RFID percolating into retail and other industry segments like healthcare?
When RFID comes along, it fundamentally questions old business processes.
Professor Sarma: We realised very early that RFID can go deep into various systems and may change the way you buy bus passes, buy groceries, etc. It may change the way you design your house, change the way you organise your closet, for instance. We realised that this was a pervasive technology. It pervades many dimensions. While we focused on retail, geography was also equally important to us. We also wanted to harness worldwide intelligence on this. We first went to Cambridge and then to the other labs. That's how we are expanding. For instance the lab in Japan has Japanese sponsors. Japanese supply chain issues are very different and that really informed our thinking about how to progress research in this space. It also changed some of our standards.
Professor Viswanadham: How do you see this whole market developing? How much is the RFID market, if somebody wants to enter into it?
Professor Sarma: I am quite optimistic about the market. I have been in this market for the past ten years, and have seen the ups and the downs. With anything like RFID, media laps it up, and the whole thing gets hyped up. Venture capitalists pick it up and then industry catches up. We are in this phase right now, and I think, it is not going to stop now. The market is bound to grow.
Professor Viswanadham: You have spawned off a lot of companies, and one of them is Oat systems. What are the mandates for Oat systems? Do you take projects from the American or European companies and then do research for them? Are there any Indian companies for which you are doing research? Are there any implementation issues?
Professor Sarma: Oat systems is an international software product company. What it makes is a software product that takes advantage of RFID. Four years ago, we dint think India as a big market, but today we are actually working with many Indian companies. For example, one of the companies is Reliance. We are working with them on some of their pilots. Indian companies are doing innovative things, in fact ground breaking.
Professor Viswanadham: In your opinion, are there any RFID applications that will be unique for India to improve their productivity?
Professor Sarma: Absolutely. I have studied the Indian retail market in the last four years and I have become confident about the opportunities. First of all we don't have a legacy of old business processes. The big problem for retailers outside India is that they already have people who are trained in old business processes. When RFID comes along, it fundamentally questions that. And India doesn't have that burden of legacy. We don't have to bother in many cases with old business processes, we can just leap frog. But at the same time India has some unique challenges. For example, India is a very hot country. So, if you are shipping meat, then you need to know how much time the meat spent in hot temperature to see whether it went bad. The third thing is that the Indian economy has evolved in a very different way. We are a very creative country. Everything from gas cylinders including the CNG for powering autorickshaws in Delhi to the railway lines are very exciting to us. I think we will take advantage of RFID in a very savvy way.
Professor Viswanadham: Considering the cost and the lack of infrastructure, will it become main stream in India?
Professor Sarma: If you had asked me ten years ago if cell phone was going to be mainstream in India, I would have said no. They were expensive and Indians could not afford it. But now even a homeless person has a cell phone. I think for applications that I talked about like the cold chain will definitely take off. Reaching consumer items will take longer than in the US or Europe. The use of RFID will absolutely take off, and it might take off faster in India.
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