The majority of major retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Albertson's, as well as the Department of Defense are instituting mandates for compliance by their major suppliers. These organizations will not be the last.  Movement toward RFID initiatives can already be seen in other industries including Healthcare, Medical Devices, Automotive, and Pharmaceuticals.

These new mandates leave many suppliers with two core questions:

• What do we have to do in order to comply?
• How can we turn this cost into a positive investment?

The emergence of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology as a force in the supply chain has created the need for middleware that can manage the flow of data between tag readers and enterprise applications in order to facilitate intelligent use of information generated by RFID tags.  Multiple vendors are entering the RFID middleware space, but most lack the ability to provide an end-to-end solution that can serve basic needs such as reader connectivity as well as more advanced requirements such as application integration. SEEBURGER's RFID Gateway is designed to address the full spectrum of RFID middleware needs, enabling an organization to implement RFID on a phased basis without changing middleware packages or engaging multiple providers. 

• Connecting to Hardware: Gateway communicates directly to printers and devices allowing organizations to seamlessly program and link EPC and UPC codes.
• Programming of RFID Infrastructure:  Gateway provides validation and authentication functionality ensuring the tags are working correctly and can be programmed with the required EPC Codes.
• Data Catalog Logging your Compliance: For mandates driven by companies such as Wal-Mart, an organization must validate that the tags which are being transferred work correctly. By storing them in our system catalog you can verify that when they left your facility, they did in fact work. Therefore, your company avoids penalties or additional fees. Additionally, Gateway provides a searchable time log if research requests are initiated by the receiving organization.
• Tag Consolidation: Throughout the RFID process, case data must be consolidated to pallet tags. In Gateway, cases are read during packing and the combined data is matched to a single pallet tag. This is necessary as it is very difficult to get a 100% read of packed cases on a full pallet due to interference caused by packaging, tag locations, and load types (i.e. liquids can cause interference during the reading procedure). 

SEEBURGER's RFID Gateway data management software will link directly to tags and readers via integration adapters and form a key feature of ScanSource's recently announced RFID Edge program, a comprehensive training, qualification, educational and support program designed to assist its value-added reseller network in successfully and profitably selling RFID solutions.

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