The so-called Building Radio frequency IDentification solutions for the Global Environment, or BRIDGE, project is funded with about $9.48m from the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, or FP6.
The BRIDGE project, which is being coordinated by the data standards body GS1, consists of 31 parties, including European and Chinese universities, and large-scale retailers, manufacturers and small and medium-sized businesses.
Among them are vendors BT, SAP, UPM Raflatac, VeriSign UK, Unisys, as well as RFID end users Nestle UK, Benedicta and Sony.
Since its inception, RFID has been hailed as the panacea for a more sophisticated and efficient global supply chain, but there are many questions to answer before this is realized, said Henri Barthel, technical director at standards body EPCglobal and BRIDGE project coordinator, in a statement.
Cross-industry participation in such a large scale project is a key to its success. The BRIDGE project will transform RFID from being an identification technology into providing an EPCglobal based product information network.
The project promises to produce pilots, deployment and training materials for various business sectors.
