Many a time while buying a medicine you might wonder – Is this medicine genuine? I hope it has come from a trusted source. But now you need not worry! Using the latest RFID technology each medicine can be tagged, carrying information about its source and destination, which can be verified.

RFID stands for Radio-Frequency Identification. This is a track and trace technology. All you need to do is tag an item and keep track of it across the supply chain.

As an electronic device it consists of a small chip and anntenas, working similar to the bar code or a magnetic strip; providing a unique identification for each object.

On scanning the information from the chip is picked up and data is communicated to the reader. A major advantage is that large numbers of tags can be read at once rather than item by item.

To help organisations quickly construct RFID-enabled supply chain management processes, Unisys Global Services India is developing the necessary RFID Environment.

The company, working with Alien Technology Corporation is developing an end-to-end, vendor-neutral solutions environment for RFID configuration - named FLIER (Flexible Logistics Information Environment for RFID).

Alien Technology provides the hardware and Unisys does system integration for the Alien Technology FLIER programme. This platform can address verticals such as manufacturing, pharma, logistics, etc.

Benefits

Since it is an end-to-end, vendor-neutral solution environment for RFID configuration it saves both time and cost.

One of the advantages is that the end customer does not have to resort to migration activities for his existing applications to make them compatible with this technology. They just need to invest in the RFID environment and build the wrapper around their existing system.

For the pharma industry Srikanth Raghavan, Director, Software Development, Unisys Global Services India feels, “Identification of drugs by RFID tagging; knowing the source of the drugs will be major boost for the drug companies.”

“Companies can look at RFID applications to make their processes simpler and Unisys will help create the framework,” mentions Mr Raghavan.  

Looking at the number of highways being developed in India, automatic toll collection using RFID technology will help the traffic move faster. This has been demonstrated by Unisys in Norway.