Commercial Applications of Ubiquitous-Computing Technologies

Within the project WIRELESS, efficiency and productivity-enhancing effects of the use of RFID in conjunction with the Electronic Product Code (EPC) on both corporate under cross-company logistics and production processes were analyzed. In addition to positive effects, obstacles as the investment amounts that are considered primarily of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as being too high and potential violations of the privacy of customers are to be considered as well. First cross-industry RFID trials indicate high returns, especially for large business groups, while smaller companies benefit at best on marginal extent from the technology and are faced with the risk of unprofitable investments. SMEs therefore run the risk of copying the application models of large enterprises due to lower financial strength and market power, as well as non-existent scale, wrong investment decisions regarding RFID. In the study "RFID in Germany 2007" the potential barriers of an RFID deployment are collected specifically for SMEs and empirically evaluated by a comparison with large companies. That is primarily SMEs and large enterprises are considered that have already gained some experience with the technology.