RFID talent shortage cited by 80 per cent of firms

Some 80 per cent of companies participating in the survey said they do not believe there are sufficient numbers of professionals skilled in RFID to hire from today. Two-thirds of organisations (66.7 per cent) said training and educating their employees in the technology is one of the biggest challenges they will face in order to succeed in the RFID market.

"We believe the market needs hundreds of systems integration companies with RFID capabilities; and hundreds of thousands of individuals knowledgeable in this technology to meet current and future demand,"​ said David Sommer, vice president, electronic commerce, CompTIA.

This shortage could impact on the food industry, which is rushing to meet both regulatory and retail demands to install means of achieving complete supply chain traceability. Retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Metro are rolling out RFID mandates to all their suppliers as a means of ensuring safety and building customer loyalty and trust.

In driving through these traceability measures down the supply chain, they are putting into place guarantees that if there is ever a recall, then any problem could be contained quickly without losing credibility.

Linda Dillman, chief information officer for Wal-Mart said at the National Retail Federation trade show earlier this year that 57 of its suppliers were now using the technology, and that this figure was to increase by the end of the month. However, she also pointed out that it would take some time for both retailers and suppliers to become fully competent in the deployment of the technology.

This assessment is backed up by the survey of CompTIA members, which found that customer adoption of RFID solutions remains relatively modest. A significant number of companies - 71.4 per cent - said their customers have not implemented RFID solutions. For those organisations with customers that implemented RFID solutions, responding companies said that fewer than 20 per cent of their customers have done so.

Similarly, 80 per cent of the responding companies said either they have yet to go past the investigation stage of RFID implementation; or have done no investigation at all. Just 16 per cent have implemented one or more RFID pilot projects for themselves or their customers.

However, a recent report from technology analyst IDTechEx claims that almost three times the volume of RFID tags will be sold in 2006 than over the previous 60 years since their invention. This exponential growth will continue and, by 2015, the value of sales of RFID tags will have increased by thirteen times over the figure for 2005.

The report, entitled RFID Forecasts, Players and Opportunities analysed the rapidly growing and diversifying market for Radio Frequency Identification RFID and predicted that the total value of this market, including systems and service, will rocket from $1.95 billion in 2005 to $26.9 billion in 2015.

The findings of the CompTIA​ survey were presented at the RFID World 2005 conference in Dallas earlier this month. CompTIA, a global trade association representing the business interests of the information technology industry, is currently working with a cross section of major players in the RFID market to address the skills shortage.