Winners of First RFID Excellence in Business Awards Announced at RFID World 2007!

Winners of the first RFID Excellence in Business Awards were announced at RFID World on March 27, 2007, prior to the conference keynote address.

CMP Technology, host of RFID World, and RFID Revolution, a market strategy consulting firm and provider of state-of-the-art education tools, co-founded the awards program at RFID World to showcase achievement, innovation, and unique applications that illustrate the power and functionality of RFID.

CMP Technology and RFID Revolution wish to thank the steering committee, judges, and the 96 Award applicants who made this year’s Awards event, an industry first in North America, a resounding success.

 

The 2007 award recipients are:

Excellence in RFID Implementation: Mercy Medical Center (end user), Edwards Lifesciences (supply chain partner), and WaveMark, Inc. (RFID vendor) are being honored for an RFID solution to track costly consumables, such as stents, within Mercy’s Catheterization Lab. The application has yielded promising results, including a projected 30% reduction in high-cost inventory, the elimination of a daily hand-count of 2,000 items, and reduced waste of a perishable product.  Click here for pictures and full judges’ write-up.

Excellence in RFID Pilot: Evidencia LLP (distributor/integrator) won this award for cold chain management of temperature and delivery of avocados, an application spanning 6,000 miles—from the Rio Blanco farms (end user) in Chile to the end customer in California, a subsidiary of Green Giant. Using RFID-enabled temperature logging technology from Evidencia’s affiliate, Information Mediary, the pilot produced 100 percent read rates despite challenging temperature and humidity conditions.  Click here for pictures and full judges’ write-up.

Excellence in RFID Technology: Eugene, Oregon-based ADASA, Inc. (vendor) is being recognized for its low-cost, wearable, mobile encoder, the PAD3500, which supports the encoding of tags anywhere, anytime. The device works in conjunction with ADASA’s SmartCartridge, enabling the hands-free loading and encoding of RF tags. The solution has already demonstrated business value in a pilot with Freedom Shopping (end user), which reduced labor by as much as 50 percent.  Click here for pictures and full judges’ write-up.

RFID Visionary of the Year: Dr. Chris Diorio, chairman and chief technical officer of Impinj, Inc., is being honored for his leadership in EPCglobal standards and UHF RFID. Dr. Diorio was a key contributor in developing practical standards for the RFID industry through his leadership as chair of the EPCglobal Hardware Action Group. His company has been the world leader in producing Gen 2 silicon chips used in RFID tags. His leadership in near-field UHF communications helped overcome some of the enviornmental challenges to RFID, such as metal and water, to produce working solutions in supply-chain tracking.  Click here for pictures and full judges’ write-up.

Most Innovative RFID Application: Texas Instruments (vendor) received this award for its work with the World Wildlife Fund (end user) in tracking white-lipped peccaries, a type of wild pig, in the Amazon. TI’s passive, low-frequency RFID transponder incorporated into the animal ear tags performed extremely well in a harsh, non-controlled environment. The RFID application is less invasive and 100 times less expensive than GPS options. The World Wildlife Fund is using the information to better understand animal behavior in order to conserve the species and its habitat.  Click here for pictures and full judges’ write-up.