Supply Chain Management and Automatic Identification Management convergence: Experiences in the Pharmaceutical Scenario

The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in the main auto-identification technologies in many heterogeneous scenarios. The ability to identify and trace individual objects is essential in many business processes, such as manufacturing, logistics, ticketing, and anti-counterfeiting. These contribute substantially to validate the concept of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT), although there are many ways to describe an IoT. It can be defined as a world-wide network of uniquely addressable interconnected objects, based on standard communication protocols (1). The core idea of the concept of the IoT is to collect any useful information about the objects of the physical world and to use this information in various applications during the objects’ life cycle. This feature can help organizations to improve existing internal and external business processes and also to create new ones. In many application scenarios, the two key elements that are making this revolution possible are: radio frequency identification (RFID) technology (Wikipedia Foundation) and the EPCglobal international standard (epcglobal). RFID is a rapidly developing technology that uses RF signals for automatic identification of objects. Among the different types (i.e. passive, semi-passive, and active) of RFID transponders, often called ‘tags’, the passive ones are used in most track and trace systems due to their higher range and very low cost, since they require no battery to operate. A typical passive RFID tag consists of an antenna and an integrated circuit chip in ASIC technology. In a passive RFID system, the reader transmits a modulated RF signal, which is received by the tag antenna. The RF voltage generated on the antenna is converted into DC (Direct Current). This voltage powers up the chip, which sends back the information that it contains.