RFID lacks ROI

RFID lacks ROI

Regarding Howard Anderson’s column “Wal-Mart and the Three Great RFID Lies“, I will not bore you with my own anecdotes about our attempts to sell RFID, which mirror Anderson’s comments.

We are distributors for industrial bar code and RFID equipment, particularly at the manufacturing level, not point of sale or distribution centers.

One comment I would like to add is that we are selling a lot more bar code equipment because of RFID initiatives of our customers.

The first reason for this reflects the topics Anderson mentioned: costs, lack of standards and lack of ROI.

The second reason we are selling a lot of bar code equipment is that substantial ROI can be achieved by optimizing logistics systems.

Customers have been motivated by the RFID talk to look at their logistics operations and find ROI – which they do with automatic-storage-and-retrieval systems, automatic sorting with material handling systems and inventory control using ADC.

But typically the savings are realized at bar code costs, not at RFID costs.

Rick Regan

Raleigh, N.C.

I urge you to write more stories like “Wal-Mart and the Three Great RFID Lies” and to continue featuring the “come on, let’s get real” tone. Please consider placing your crosshairs on:

• Overhyped storage baloney: If storage is really the hottest area in the computer industry, as many suggest, then the industry is in trouble.• Payment systems: Until people address who is going to pay for new readers and related equipment, real privacy protection, and the but-now-everyone-is-a-bank issue, delays will drown out the pending utopia.

• Why is e-mail still stuck in Wild West mode? This shouldn’t be that hard, folks, and if it is, then we are not very good at what we do.

Christopher H. Reynolds

Wayland, Mass.

Agrees with Gibbs on MySpace tool

I agree with Mark Gibbs’ column on the limitations of MySpace Guardian. I work for a company that makes monitoring software. One of the main agendas is selling the tool to help protect and monitor children. But we have always maintained that the most important thing for a parent and child is open communication (in regards to what kids are doing online, where they are going, who they talk to and so on.) You can’t afford to not have this in the world of technology.

No child that is given care, love and attention forms an online relationship and then runs off into the real world for some kind of inappropriate liaison.

However, I don’t agree that MySpace is not the problem. It’s a two-way street traveled by the sleaze balls who hang out there and the real kids who are addicted to it. Sooner or later, the paths will cross. And if the children weren’t on MySpace to begin with, or parents exercised more care, problems could be avoided.

But the basis of the problem is that little Jane met Slimeball No. 1 on MySpace, a place that isn’t always friendly.

Ken Shallcross

New York, N.Y.