Delfour and its consortium partners will also examine how storage warehouses might handle the variety of RFID preferences that will likely spring forth in the future.
"People will be sending shipments that use a mishmash of different RFID products—and there might be some shipments that dont use any RFID at all," said Delfour President and CEO Joe Couto.
Delfours first RFID lab—located at Richmond Cold Storage in Richmond, Va.—has already opened. By the end of this year, the company expects to launch a second lab at Confederation Freezers in Brampton, Ontario.
Delfour will also leverage the labs to try to determine what to do about RFID-enabling its own software, known as the Delfour SmartEnterprise 2 3PL and 3PL Enterprise Foundation product suites.
"Will we buy, build or align with other companies? Will we rip our software apart or [interface] to some RFID middleware product?" Couto asked.
Delfour could have created an RFID strategy "on nothing more than a wish and a prayer," he told eWEEK.com.
"But instead weve decided to create a consortium. Were being agnostic about RFID technology. Were inviting vendors of good RFID products to donate to our lab. We will then pound the liver out of the products."
Research Assistant
