CEO Letter: Unlocking Enterprise Use Cases with Gen2X

原文链接：https://www.impinj.com/library/blog/ceo-letter-unlocking-enterprise-use-cases-with-impinj-gen2x

Impinj Gen2X speeds inventory, increases tag read range, declutters environments, protects consumers, inhibits label and item counterfeiting and reduces cost.

For nearly two decades, Impinj has stood at the forefront of RAIN RFID, helping visionary Fortune 500 enterprises solve tough operational challenges. For example, self-checkout and loss prevention at a visionary European retailer, loading and shipping accuracy at a major global logistics provider and food inventory at a leading grocery chain. Solving these challenges led us to develop key RAIN innovations – a solutions toolbox – that we call Impinj Gen2X. 

Always part of the plan  

Back in 2004, as the Gen2 working group developed the RAIN standard, we knew we couldn’t anticipate the needs of every enterprise in every industry. So, we created a standard that incorporated those things we did know, while leaving the door open for solution providers to innovate on top of the standard. If the innovations proved broadly useful then future versions of the standard could add them. If features were narrowly useful or out-of-scope then they would remain the domain of individual solution providers. 

In our experience, enterprises want to know (1) does Gen2X interoperate seamlessly with the RAIN standard and (2) is it available to all solution providers? The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second is we have already given Gen2X royalty-free to all leading reader manufacturers, including Zebra Technologies, and our Gen2X patents are included in our cross license with our primary endpoint IC competitor. Looking forward, if parts of Gen2X prove broadly useful then we will consider contributing them to the next version of the RAIN standard. 

“As RAIN RFID becomes increasingly essential to leading global enterprises, Zebra and Impinj are driving innovations that deliver the item visibility those enterprises need,” said Joe White, chief product and solutions officer at Zebra Technologies. “Zebra, as a Gen2X licensee, plans to leverage Gen2X in our products and solutions. We look forward to the benefits Gen2X will have enhancing item visibility and creating operational success for our customers.”

At the most fundamental level, Gen2X either solves previously unsolvable use cases, reduces solution cost or both. For example, Gen2X reduces retail-inventory counting time, saving labor cost. It declutters conveyor-to-truck shipment loading, reducing costly misshipments. Its decluttering also improves retail loss prevention, allowing consumer self-checkout. It boosts dock-door directional accuracy, reducing costly shipping mistakes. It improves the readability of small, embedded tags or tags on hard-to-read items, reducing tag cost and enabling new use cases like food tagging. It addresses consumer privacy at point-of-sale. And Gen2X is not static – we continue adding new innovations to it. We are today focused on enterprise use cases, but tomorrow’s emphasis will be on consumer use cases, including consumer safety and item sustainability. And always on reducing solution cost.