Overview
EPC programs can take time to deliver value, but if the value depends on partners, suppliers and customers rolling out capital investments in reader infrastructure—the time involved could be significant. By taking advantage of the existing electronic commerce network already used in the supply chain, companies can roll out EPC-enabled programs independent of their partners.
Current EPC/RFID programs typically are concerned with either supply chain logistics (“Where is it?”), or the logistics of the sales floor (“Is the product in the front or back of the store?”). Today this information is shared using standard business documents transmitted electronically, but the systems that are sending those documents are “trusting” other sources, i.e., they have no direct capability to “observe” logistics events. As an example, a store associate may start to update the system that goods have moved onto the selling floor, and then get distracted—never completing the update.
The advantage of EPC/RFID is that events are observed in an automated fashion. A tag is either “read” or not “read” by a given reader. Assuming the location of the reader is known, you know that the case, pallet or item marked by the tag is probably within three to eight feet of that reader, dramatically increasing accuracy. The challenge is the very limited number of readers currently in the supply chain.
The solution is to integrate the two networks (EPC and e-commerce), with the EPC/RFID infrastructure interacting through traditional document-based electronic commerce. As an example, when an order is “picked” for shipment, the EPCs of each case can be added to the order’s ASN (Advance Ship Notice, a critical electronic document used in many supply chains). When any of the EPCs associated to a given ASN are read as passing out of the dock door—the ASN is sent to the customer.
As the shipment flows through the supply chain, many logistics companies will not have RFID capability but will electronically send logistics documents associated with the shipment. If you want to know the location of a given EPC, software can associate the EPC to an ASN and follow the “electronic paper trail”.
When the shipment arrives at the customer (who is RFID enabled), the entire receipt process can be done based on RFID—with a receipt notice (and maybe even payment) sent to the supplier based entirely on tag reads. Both the customer and the supplier will have access to the information from both tag reads and electronic documents.
In order to achieve this, the RFID middleware must cleanly integrate to the system that handles electronic documents—usually a B2B messaging broker like GXS Enterprise Gateway—and a database of EPCs and shipments must be available for query. The RFID middleware can then transmit data (typically in XML format) to a data transformation tool for conversion into the appropriate format (X12, EDIFACT, RosettaNet, etc.). Likewise, the RFID middleware and/or B2B broker must be capable of going from a given EPC to an open order, and vice-versa.
The GXS solution in this area involves a partnership with epcSolutions (for RFID Middleware). epcSolutions provides the RFID/EPC infrastructure, and a database of known tags and shipments. The epcSolutions software is integrated to the data transformation and B2B messaging infrastructure of the GXS Enterprise System. As events occur, data is translated into the right format for a trading partner and sent via the B2B broker.
