Bernd Schoner, Co-Founder, ThingMagic, Now a division of Trimble

How is your organisation involved with RFID technology?
ThingMagic has been a leading developer of radio frequency identification technology for ten years, which makes us one of the oldest companies in this sector. Our customers include some of the world's largest industrial automation firms, manufacturers, automotive companies, retailers, and consumer companies. Our first product was the industry’s first RFID reader to show interoperability in the Electronic Product Code (EPC) standard. We are still making embedded and fixed passive UHF RFID readers and we are providing custom services that go with them.

Why did you choose to focus on this specific type of RFID reader?
Passive Ultra-High Frequency, or UHF, RFID readers are just a narrow slice of the greater RFID value chain, but they are a very important segment all the same. The retail supply chain’s interest in this technology is what really put it on the map. UHF has physical properties that put it into a special category. Everything you can do with low or high frequency, you can do with UHF … and a lot more. It allows for longer read distances, and yet it can do short distances as well. Even if we are now expanding our activities, passive UHF readers and antennas will always be a core business for us that we will continue to pursue.

Can you give us an example of an application your technology makes possible?
Consumers nowadays are seeing more and more RFID tags in clothing stores. One of the reasons RFID is taking off in this area is because the apparel sector has lots of attributes – jeans, for example, come in a wide range of colors, sizes, shapes, fabrics and so forth. Furthermore, an article of clothing doesn’t cost a few cents, it costs $10 dollars to $100 dollars, if not more.

These same qualities – a complex set of attributes and a fairly significant cost per item – exist in many other sectors, and any time you find them, you can find advantages using RFID. Take construction work, for instance. There are a whole range of different tools used, each with its own specific attributes, and in many cases a very high cost per item. In fact, some surveying tools can cost $10,000 each. Workers need to be able to find and take the right tool quickly. If they grab the wrong one, they can’t do their job. RFID tags on individual tools can make this easier to manage. Even building materials can be tagged: today, so many parts of a house or a building are pre-fab pieces that are designed and built to specification somewhere else and delivered to the site ready to install. RFID can help make sure the right pieces get to the right part of a construction site at the right time, and then help clarify which piece of the puzzle goes exactly where.

What is your vision for the future of RFID?
Some people speak about an imminent “explosion” of RFID. I’m more of a realist. I don’t think there will be an explosion, but I do think we will see steady significant growth. We’re seeing it already, and it’s definitely more than just a “catching-up” effect after the 2009 crisis. There is a trend and it is continuing: every quarter is better than the previous one. In the past, this industry has sometimes been overly confident. I think we should all be happy with strong double-digit growth without obsessing about an explosion.


Trimble’s ThingMagic Division is a leading provider of UHF RFID reader engines, development platforms and design services for a wide range of applications. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), ThingMagic was founded in 2000 by a group of visionary PhD graduates from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. For more information, visit www.thingmagic.com.