Shipping and RFID have finally converged. Well, at least someone is talking about that possibility at RFID News. See David Wyld’s post.
UPDATE2: RFID for the Mentally Impaired
•Monday • Leave a CommentThis past week, Marshea Fenderson and I completed work on our business plan for a business seminar at the graduate school of North Carolina State University. As previewed before on the blog, Marshea and I contend that there is a strong market for RFID tracking in the mentally impaired assisted living facility industry.
Consider that more than 34,000 of the 5.25M people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in the United States wander out of their homes or care facilities each year (missingpatient.com). Elopement, as it is known in the industry, is a real problem. According to Dennis Thompson, Jr. in an article on everydayhealth.com, “fewer than four out of every 100 adults with memory impairment who wander away from home are able to return without assistance. ‘If not found within the first 24 hours, half will experience serious injury or death.’”
We propose using an active RFID tag on patients susceptible to elopement and then an array of readers to provide RTLS and zone access/restriction. Our analysis suggests that assisted living facilities will benefit from this type of setup in several ways. First, we believe that they can market this product to their patients and their families and markup the equipment that they purchase from us. This will provide an additional revenue stream. Second, we expect this type of product will reduce their staffing needs and may reduce construction costs of facilities. These costs would be replaced by the costs for the RFID solution, but would be passed directly onto their clients.
Also of note is the benefit conferred to the families of these patients. Our solution includes web-based platforms which family members could log into and see the current location of the patient. This will provide much needed peace of mind and a new way to stay engaged in the life of the patient.
Inventory Management
•Monday • Leave a CommentAs I suspected, we are closer to an RFID inventory management solution than ever before. As outlined in a recent RFID Journal article, an Indian Jeweler is excited to be able to inventory all 10,000 pieces of their current stock in an hour.
Bhima & Brothers Jewellers (B&BJ) is tracking its high-value inventory and providing customers with immediate information regarding its jewelry, with an RFID system deployed at one of its five stores. The system has reduced the amount of time the store requires to take inventory from 36 man-hours down to one, and has decreased the time necessary to complete a sales transaction from between six and eight minutes, to less than one minute.
This is the type of project that will generate a positive ROI—something that is desparately needed to push RFID into the mainstream.
UPDATE: RFID for the Mentally Impaired
•Wednesday • 1 CommentSeveral excellent articles have appeared in RFID Journal recently addressing the use of RFID in elderly, mentally impared patients.
- By using RFID to track wandering patters of suspected dementia patients, researchers have been able to accurately diagnose dimentia.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/4542/ - By sewing an RFID tag in the clothing of dementia patients, Shady Palms assisted-living facility can accurately respond to eloping (fleeing) patients.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/4610/ - Elderly facilities in England use RFID buttons sewn to clothing to avoid frustrating apparel mix-ups.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/4511/
Finding these examples adds legitimacy to the market research we are undertaking for our class project referenced earlier.
On the Margin
•Saturday • 1 CommentI had a great conversation over lunch last week with a friend in the RFID space. It seems that people look for radical transformative technologies. They look for a panacea—something that will cure all of their woes and increase reliability, efficiency, pick your favorite —y.
Improvements are often best made on the margin. Particularly in large, well developed organizations, much of the efficiency has already been squeezed out. Stop looking for something to change your world over night and look for several (or many) things that will change your world just a little bit. Consider the compass-heading analog. If you are off course by a few degrees in the beginning, you wind up way off course the further out you go. So goes efficiency improvements. Small differences can manifest change dramatically over time, either by growing exponentially themselves or by turning you on to new ideas as you slowly evolve. Agile is a great illustration of this concept. Do something, take a snapshot and re-evaluate. Small, incremental changes will begin to lead you in directions you never knew were possible.
Instead of one 10% improvement, consider ten 1% improvements.
RFID for the Mentally Impaired
•Monday • 2 CommentsAnother project is in the works. I’m creating a business plan for a company that markets RFID tracking devices to the mentally impaired—specificially those that are susceptible to becoming lost—or, as I like to call it: grossly disoriented it is known in the industry: elopement.
Early competition appears to be Project Lifesaver.
Pragmatic Marketing
•Wednesday • Leave a CommentI’ve been reading about pragmatic marketing lately, and there’s a great website to use for reference. I particularly enjoyed the recent post about what employees would say to their company presidents if they could speak without reprisal: see here. Also see this excellent interactive graph outlining key tools.
Windows and Mirrors
•Friday • Leave a CommentI love the analogy presented in Good to Great about using windows and mirrors. (By the way, Jim Collins has a great website.) Often times, organizations are quite adept at using a mirror to asses their own strengths and weaknesses. And, for sure, we should all take time to look out the window at organizations around us to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
Perhaps a good extension of the mirror is a rear-view mirror. I like this quick review from Supply Chain Digest: http://www.scdigest.com/assets/On_Target/09-01-15-4.php?cid=2161.
RFID on a Blackberry?
•Sunday • Leave a CommentHere’s a great article on a new technology. It seems like a Blackberry may be an expensive way to manage your RFID data, unless you already need one. This may be a good gadget for an RFID enthusiast or developer, though.
http://morerfid.com/details.php?subdetail=Report&action=details&report_id=5218&display=RFID?
Confidence Intervals
•Tuesday • Leave a CommentKaren Radde, an RFID professional with RFIDSupplyChain.com, wrote once on her Blue Bean blog that customers are always wanting to know “How far will it read?” Perhaps tag/reader manufacturers should begin reporting something akin to confidence intervals. Whereas, a given RFID technology should yield results at a given level under certain circumstances, by changing variables x, y and z, users can expect a new performance based on some calculated probability. Get your calculators out…
