Oh, the fun of hyped-up technologies. Do you remember just a few years ago how big RFID was? Or, more accurately, how big it was going to be? It didn’t roll out as expected. This is a good example of the hype cycle, often called the Gartner Hype Cycle.

Here’s a look at how the cycle works:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

A new technology hits the marketplace. The media picks up on it, and suddenly it’s all the rage. Investors jump on the bandwagon, and the crowd gets all excited about it.

But somewhere along the way, reality sets in, and it begins to dawn on people that it will take more work (oh, no – work!) than originally expected to implement what’s needed to make the technology actually work or become widely adopted.

What’s happening with RFID?

I work in the technology field for in-plant productivity, data acquisition and visibility solutions. We have been implementing bar code solutions for over 20 years, and we have done RFID projects since the early 1990s. Prior to that, while I was in university in the late 80s, I worked on a large dairy farm that implemented wearable RFID transponders for cows to monitor and control their lactation cycles and their milking and eating status.

When RFID started to become big news, (I know it’s easy to say now) but it was clear to me with a university physics background that the idea of tagging and reading RFID on cases was going to be difficult and nearly impossible, especially with items like meat that absorb the RF signals, and metal cans that reflect signals.

This diagram from Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1124212) illustrates where some technologies are on the hype cycle:

Do you see RFID in the “Trough of Disillusionment”?

As it turns out, there are definitely valid, workable applications for RFID, but they’re different from what many folks thought 5 years ago.

Carlisle Technology, for example, offers RFID solutions for food plants to track carts, tubs, and combos. The solutions can be short-read-range with passive tags, or long-range to do location tracking within a warehouse or cooler. So the technology is still valid, but for the right applications. As time goes on, we’ll see more uses and adoption for RFID along the more gradual upward curve.

Traceability and the growing hype

I have my Google News alerts set to look for Food Safety and Traceability, so I watch what’s going regarding this topic. I think we’re on the early steep rising side of the Hype Cycle when it comes to Traceability. And I’ll tell you why I think this.

Take Fresh Produce, for instance. Some of the produce associations have done a good job of setting up an initiative that will help their industry achieve traceability. See www.producetraceability.org. They’ve clearly outlined the steps that produce pickers/packers need to follow. And it’s a good move. The huge recalls in produce need to be reduced, contained, and eliminated.

Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) Compliance

There are numerous companies out there (including Carlisle) that are now boasting that they/we have PTI compliant solutions. It’s not always clear what they everybody is offering, but initially, a PTI compliant solution means the tools that will enable produce companies to put bar code labels on each and every case of produce, displaying and encoding the GTIN and Lot number.

This is the easy part. Almost anyone can do that.

Another PTI step in a couple of years will be the ability to read and store the case and pallet bar code labels.

Again, this not a big deal. Several companies have solutions for this. Carlisle Technology’s meat and poultry customers have been doing this for a couple of decades already with case-level serialization and detailed pallet handling.

But what’s not easy, and this is where it separate the men from the boys, so to speak, is providing an integrated solution that enables each organization to positively track and have complete real-time visibility of all items within their enterprise.

The reality is that produce packing houses are more complex than simply receiving products in one door and shipping them out another. Quality checks, inventory management, proper stock rotation and sortation are required. There are mixed lots and grading of products within lots according to parameters such as quality, size, and color. Product can be received from outside suppliers with or without the proper information. Product from their own fields or greenhouses need to be received by recording several attributes. Market pricing affects what gets shipped to whom and when. Grower payment is dependent on the price paid downstream, so there needs to be accurate tracking throughout of where grower-specific product was sold.

This requires not only the right kind of system including equipment and software, but the following of the necessary procedures.

What we’ll see in the next few years, I expect, is that companies will realize that applying labels and scanning bar codes won’t be enough. They will have to work with a solution provider to do the hard work of tracking products accurately at each step in their processes.

Traceability is Not the Goal

I fully expect that traceability itself won’t be the goal; rather, in-plant productivity solutions that incorporate registering every product movement and transformation, along with capturing quality details and doing the appropriate checks at each control point, and then having real-time visibility into the product movements and related activities will be the goal. And in reaching that goal, traceability will come along for the ride and be a by-product of achieving those objectives.

We’ll see the traceability topic continue to rise meteorically, and then reality will set in and something else will be big news. And those of us who have solutions and are committed for the long term will continue past the trough of disillusionment to work on implementing the needed solutions that will provide the benefits (link to benefits) that are surely out there.

Watch or ride the cycle. Then let’s talk about real solutions that really work.