According to Bratin Chakraborty, GM-Technology Solutions at Keane Inc, other areas that will eventually embrace this in a big way will be the defense and the transport sector.

"RFID will enable the introduction of a process, whereby relevant components for each of the variety of engines to be assembled are picked based on the sequencing plan and then moved to the assembly line through the integration of the SAP ERP system with RFID"
-Avnesh Jain, manager, Information Systems at Hero Honda

Getting Started
With things moving from education to actual groundwork, the enterprises are now looking at what application to get started with. According to Mathur, asset-tracking is an appropriate application to start with on the RFID roadmap. In fact, asset tracking is expected to emerge as the leading RFID application in the Indian market cutting across the industry verticals. Besides this, security and access control remain the mainstream applications. According to Yegnan, warehouse management, asset management and solutions around supply chain will be the first mover.

According to Sule, from the perspective of 'key process areas', the killer application in retail will be in 'distribution chain'. Another potential application is at the retail PoS, using a combination of RFID, Smart Card, Wireless Network and Sensor networks. Typical implementations in transport and logistics will be for parcel and container tracking, tracking of hazardous material, high value goods, etc. Putta feels that the initial applications in the retail segment are likely to be around asset tracking, supply chain automation inventory management, out of stock management, and fresh item management of perishables and promotions execution. The manufacturers, on the other hand, are expected to deploy the technology for asset tracking and improving work-in-process manufacturing processes.

	"Animal ID and gas cylinder tagging will be killer applications, specifically for the Indian market"
	-Rajeev Mehtani, VP and MD, NXP Semiconductors India

Rajeev Mehtani, VP and MD, NXP Semiconductors India feels that animal ID and gas cylinder tagging will be the killer applications, specifically for the Indian market. Rural economy and the agricultural sector lag in terms of growth. Improving the cattle health, improving the milk yield and tracking the life cycle of the revenue-contributing cattle, can help in improving the rural economy. Gas cylinder tagging, he points out, will be a killer application in India for a short term until the piped gas dream is realized. The number of CNG vehicles, which also use the cylinder, is increasing as well. Tagging and tracking of these cylinders can help in identifying misuse, lost cylinders, legal users, and will help in improving the profitability of the gas providers. According to Chakraborty, the Indian market will have a good future in wagon/container tracking like in railways, passport and supply chain management automation.

According to Kumar, the chief applications for RFID should look towards getting more real time and accurate data so that supply chain management across the landmass of the country can be better managed. In general terms, he foresees 'Supply Chain Visibility' and 'Reusable Asset Tracking' as the key solutions that have high applicability in the Indian market, especially in manufacturing, retail, government and healthcare.

"The Indian market will take the learnings from the US and European markets and adopt the technology in a focused way"		"Factors driving RFID adoption are the promise of process optimization, streamlining the supply chain and increased collaboration"		"We are noticing a change in the customers' mindset, to include RFID in their overall IT decision making"
-Prasad Putta, founder, Oat System		-Padmaja Krishnan, director, Marketing, Planning and Research, CSC India		-Shailender Kumar, MD, BEA Systems

Like most technologies, RFID has its share of challenges. According to Kuldeep Tikoo, country manager, M/A-COM, Tyco Electronics, among the typical challenges are RFID reader and system cost, which is a major issue, and read rates and tag performance in adverse conditions.

While the good news is that RFID tags can collect lots of data, the down side is to manage and utilize this data. According to Jain, any organization planning to deploy RFID will definitely need more than tags and readers. Back-end support at the database level is required to complete the cycle.

Among other challenges is the shortfall of experienced solutions providers in India with adequate RFID expertise. Jain agrees that that there is a shortfall of experience in the Indian market, and finding the right competence to execute an RFID application is a real challenge. While many vendors already have in-house RFID labs, they lack adequate on-ground implementation track record. As Sareen points out, RFID is not plug and play application, and requires much understanding of the technology and the systems processes of the organization.

Higher capital costs (viz. for long range readers) and short-term high RoI focus have been other roadblocks. Also, Mehtani points out that blindly following US/Europe deployments would not yield good return on investments in India. "We need to carefully choose the right business cases and develop customized solutions to demonstrate RoIs to the stake holders,giving confidence to deploy on a large scale," he advises.

RFID is not a magic wand as the hype around it suggests. According to Yegnan, it's like any other technology and would need a lot of trials and errors before a solution takes a RoI ready shape. Since the success of RFID will directly impact physical business processes, enterprises have to factor in many process re-engineering issues before one gets any realistic results.

Shipra Arora
shipraa@cybermedia.co.in

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