Global RFID : The Value of the EPCglobal Network for Supply Chain Management

At the same time, I was a junior Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble w- ried about a much more mundane problem: how to keep my products on the shelf. Embedding RFID tags in the products, and RFID readers in the shelf, seemed like the perfect – indeed the only – way to do this. But I needed RFID to be cheaper, better, and standardized in an open system. In early 1999, by sheer chance, I met Brock and Sarma. The result was a potent meeting of minds. I was looking to fund research, and Brock, Sarma and Siu were looking for research funding. Working with Alan Haberman of the Uniform Code Council, one of the founding fathers of the UPC bar code, and Allan Boath of the Gillette C- pany, we developed a plan for a new industry funded research consortium at MIT.