Goals and Achievements

Global standards for consumer satisfaction and protection

As a non-profit, membership-based organisation, our goal is to help EPCglobal subscribers make the most of RFID and EPC technology by promoting worldwide use of the Electronic Product Code (EPC).

Once companies begin to reap the benefits of RFID, those benefits are passed on to consumers. They include safer, better products and services and easier transportation. In other words, RFID and EPC will ensure better consumer satisfaction and protection.

By helping industries set standards and by promoting the responsible development and implementation of EPC technology, we are moving ahead toward our objective.

Milestones

With the introduction of the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 standard for RFID tags, we achieved an important milestone. Companies began adopting this global standard for tags at the beginning of 2007. This is the first step in sharing product and process information through the EPCglobal network.

The network is a method of collating and sharing information about the physical movement of individual items in a secure manner. It will make use of the EPC via the EPCIS (EPC Information Services), which will give authorized parties in the supply chain information on items as they travel along that chain – from the time they are produced to the time they are shipped to consumers. The EPCIS can provide answers to questions such as: which store was the product delivered to? What components does the product have? Was the product tampered with at any point during delivery?

Such information is crucial for quality control and possible product recalls.