In the age of RFID, the printer is quickly becoming a mission-critical piece of equipment in a company's supply chain strategy.

Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy are imposing mandates that require suppliers to put radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on every case and pallet. There are even deadlines set -- Wal-Mart wants all of its suppliers tagging product by the end of 2006. That time limit has manufacturers scrambling to start implementing a RFID-enabled shipping strategy. And it all starts with the printed label.

To accommodate the growing demand for RFID encoder/applicators, printer vendors are introducing a steady stream of new products. Companies such as Zebra Technologies (Vernon Hills, IL), Intermec Technologies Corp. (Everett, WA), Paxar Corp. (White Plains, NY), Weber Marking Systems Inc. (Arlington Heights, IL), Avery Dennison (Philadelphia) and SATO America Inc. (Charlotte, NC), all of which have had success with bar code printers in the past, are now making their mark with RFID versions.

The technology is not new. Indeed, these vendors have had thermal printers and applicators with RFID encoding for at least five years. But it has only been recently that manufacturers have demanded such products. "We were in a chicken and egg situation where people thought this would be interesting technology to track stuff through the supply chain. The problem was cost," said Matt Ream, senior manager for RFID at Zebra. "Cost could not go down until volumes were way up, and volumes wouldn't go up until cost came down."

It was at a standoff until 2003, when Wal-Mart put its foot down and required all suppliers to eventually use RFID technology on every case or pallet sent to them. The first deadline was in January of this year for Wal-Mart's largest suppliers that ship to certain Wal-Mart distribution centers. During the next few years, other suppliers and more distribution centers will be included in the mandate. "That is what sent the market roaring," according to Ream. "There was finally a killer application and a big end user that would drive it. That in turn spawned a lot of innovation to develop the technology further for those applications."

The innovation comes in part from organizations such as EPCglobal Inc., which is working to develop royalty-free industry-driven standards for the electronic product code (EPC) using RFID. In December, the organization approved the RFID UHF Generation 2 specification that includes read/write capability, improved security and read rates that are up to 10 times faster than the earlier Gen 1 spec. As Gen 2-compliant products roll out during the next six months, printer vendors are not just creating vanilla versions of their hardware. Rather, they are adding more intelligence to their products with functions that can weed out bad tags, synchronize human readable labels with the data format programmed for the EPC number and even include hooks that allow customized front ends to connect with middleware and ERP systems.

So even if manufacturers are adding RFID-enabled industrial printers as a tactical approach for compliance through "slap and ship" -- which is simply placing RFID tags on cases and pallets in distribution centers -- adopting these next-generation models will situate them for a more holistic RFID approach. Companies need to consider the big picture that will eventually result in return on investment by reducing costs and increasing efficiencies throughout the supply chain, according to a white paper from New York-based Deloitte Development LLC.

THE BIG PICTURE

As important as the printer is in a RFID operation, it should only be part of the overall RFID strategy at a company. "Step one is forming a team to evaluate what kind of operation you have and understand who is putting the mandate requirements on you and what kind of effect it will have," said Ann Marie Phaneuf, Weber Marking's director of marketing. The team should be comprised of individuals from IT, manufacturing, logistics and operations. The goal should be to eventually find ways to gain some ROI and make improvements to your own operation by utilizing data available from trading partners, keeping inventory down and getting closer to just-in-time manufacturing. "It's a complex thing that will vary from one company to the next," Phaneuf says. And there are different pieces to the puzzle -- the printer being one.

Weber Marking OEMs its print engines from Zebra, but it designs and manufactures the RFID printer applicator itself. Designed for high-volume automated environments, Weber's model 5200rfid printer-applicator includes proprietary Legitronic Print-Apply software that combines label design, editing and printing with RFID encoding.