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EPC/RFID PIONEER DR. SANJAY SARMA TO ADVOCATE FOR CE SUPPLY CHAIN "COOPETITION"
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Sep 15, 2006, 10:11

Dr. Sanjay Sarma is a member of the Board of Governors of
EPCGlobal, the standards-setting organization that made it possible for
radio-frequency identification (RFID) to be adopted worldwide for all
commerce for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Sarma is also an executive board  member of OATSystems, Inc., a recognized RFID framework leader with software that empowers businesses to achieve competitive advantage from RFID.

It was his stature as an industry observer, as well as his direct involvement with the consumer electronics supply chain, that has made him a featured
featured addition to the roster of experts speaking at the first annual Consumer Electronics Supply Chain Academy (CESCA), January 10-11, 2007, at the International CES, the world's  largest consumer technology tradeshow, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At the CESCA event, Dr. Sarma will discuss how scientific process measurement and improvement have proved  themsevels to be so fundamental as to decide the fates of entire industries.

"It is widely understood now that principles like lean manufacturing
and 'Six Sigma' are critical to competitiveness today," he said,
referring to methodology that uses statistical analysis of process data to
identify deviations from normal operations and eliminate defects. In the
area of logistics and supply chain management, "Six Sigma" quality is
commonly defined as producing no more than 3.4 defects per million
units.

"Unfortunately, it is impossible to scientifically manage processes
that cannot be monitored or observed - and the supply chain, which is a
such an important component of any enterprise's balance-sheet-has
suffered from this shortcoming," Dr. Sarma pointed out. "RFID potentially
changes all that. I will describe [at CESCA] some emerging results on the
use of RFID in supplier and retailer supply chains and show how Six
Sigma methodologies can now be brought into focus to achieve significant
top-line and bottom-line gains.

Reflecting on his participation in the creation of EPCglobal, Dr. Sarma reflected: "Since there was such a groundswell of support for EPCglobal, it was fairly straighforward to set it up - and many people from MIT, Gillette, P&G, Wal-Mart and GS1 US took a great deal of leadership," recalls Dr. Sarma. "The key difficulty in standards tends to be around IP. Again, however, the end-users and the technology vendors were remarkably cooperative. So all in all, though it was a lot of work from many people, it was a productive and
extremely rapid process."

"We wanted to avoid a standards fragmentation situation because the costs in EPC are all about 'coopetition.' The more people cooperate on a standard, the better they can compete on technology and costs."

As pioneers in the development of RFID technology, OATSystems, Inc. has been setting the standard in RFID for over half a decade
and is responsible for industry firsts that include the largest scale
and largest scope of deployments, as well as the most innovative
approaches to providing enterprise-wide RFID solutions. OAT's multinational
client base, which includes companies such as Hewlett-Packard and
Gillette, consists of over 50 customers in retail, CPG, consumer electronics,
manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace and defense.

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