I have been reading a lot more about the coming of RFID. It seems everyone agrees that this will cause a data explosion with manufacturing, distribution and supply chain applications. But no one seems to be addressing the requirements of the data scanning and accumulation within the networks. For low volume high value merchandise the data might be small, however , for high volume middle value products, I can see where there might be some bottlenecks created within our current network & data infrastructures.

Will companies build store and forward caching networks to capture information before sending production information batches to the accounting & inventory systems or will they try to build real time inventory systems to capture all of the RFID information? I imagine at first companies will try to cobble together solutions using existing technology, but most of the information used to track the RFID tag progress through a production or transport system will be transitory. Will the Government step in with impossible to enforce HIPPA and Sarbanes Oxley like regulations about RFID data tracking and data retention?

Technology has come up with a short term answer with new Perpendicular Drive Technology. RFID may cause a whole new wave of technological evolution. For one thing , it should certainly change the bar code readers in tape libraries. RFID will also probably cause an evolution in the addressing & classification of storage. Interesting stuff!