Should I implement RFID?

Many articles concerning RFID (radio frequency identification) have been written during the last couple of years, so it is not necessary to explain the nature of the technology or its different ways of use. The question raised in this article is whether to implement this technology into our business or not? If we look at the market trends we will find out that RFID is finding its way in the transportation and logistics business, but at a slow pace. There is no doubt that sooner or later everybody in the world of logistics will have to use RFID, or one of its future representatives to track goods, containers, trucks and ships back to the customers if they want to stay competitive, but is the right time now? It depends on each company's needs. If you own a big or middle ranked transportation company the best thing to do is to get your shipments tagged. Such company structures have bigger operating costs for organization and supply chain management, which can be lowered by implementing RFID technologies and applications, but even if you do you must not forget about the future and that all implementations of the RFID technology must be able to work with it's future releases, ofcourse part of the problem is the lack of standard so far. The same problem will eventually reduce the need of implementing such technology in smaller companies where the expenses for organization and tracking shipments and goods are not big. Eventually, if we consider longer periods of operation, RFID will pay back but if before that a new standard comes along with newer and better applications and all the equipment has to be bought again, then it will turn out that for smaller logistics operators the implementation of RFID technologies has been nothing but a considerable loss of money.