Dow CIO focuses on 10 RFID initiatives

As Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology begins to make inroads into some enterprises, CIOs can learn a detail or two from Dow Chemical Chief Information Officer Dave Kepler. After Dow internally asked for RFID project proposals two years ago, it received more than 450. It quickly evaluated the proposals and, based on the company's Six Sigma methodology, started to eliminate the projects down to 10. Dow also established a center of expertise dedicated to RFID. Employees in the group were responsible for identifying the projects and evaluating emerging RFID technologies. After a
six-month evaluation period, the projects approved include: Cylinder tracking-using RFID tags and readers to monitor the transport of gas cylinders; Tanker truck tracking; Rail car tracking and product monitoring; Intermodel container and content tracking; Warehouse and inventory management; Product consignment inventory management; Pipeline worker monitoring; Tracking inventory in the company's Agro Sciences unit; Hazardous material tracking; and Maintenance parts tracking.

For all the details on RFID and Dow Chemical:
- see the article in Baseline