Friday, 2 February 2007

Stratum Global, Intermec Help Community College Create RFID Program

Stratum Global along with Intermec have helped create a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) program at Oakton Community College. Based in Des Plaines, Ill., Oakton's RFID program provides experience in an industrial warehouse environment to prepare students for opportunities...

Stratum Global along with Intermec have helped create a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) program at Oakton Community College. Based in Des Plaines, Ill., Oakton's RFID program provides experience in an industrial warehouse environment to prepare students for opportunities in the workplace, the companies said in a statement.

Intermec provided its IF5 RFID readers with 700 series mobile computers and portal antennas. Stratum Global, an RFID software provider and Intermec Honours Partner, was lead on the project and provided its TagNet RFID software solution suite, the company said.

According to the Oakton RFID lab is designed to emulate a factory portal where workers move tagged boxes or pallets through the passageway allowing inventory processing to occur automatically. The curricula will prepare students for managerial and technical positions within the transportation, warehousing and logistics industries. In addition to gaining RFID technical expertise, the program will teach students how to measure and communicate the business value of RFID implementations to non-technical managers.

"As RFID adoption grows, businesses will need employees skilled in its design and operation," said Robert Sompolski, dean of mathematics and technologies at Oakton Community College. "Our objective was to partner closely with RFID players, like Intermec and Stratum Global, to create a lab that will give our students experience working directly with RFID software, hardware and infrastructure so they will gain the knowledge that will enable them to implement real-world RFID systems. Without the donations of time and equipment from the industry, this could not have happened so quickly."

"When industries have access to a workforce that is already educated about RFID, it makes advancing the technology that much easier," said Stratum Global Chief Operating Officer Bill Hood. "The Oakton Community College RFID Centre creates a bridge between the education and the industrial community to accelerate the adoption of RFID technology.