Australians sceptical about RFID benefits

Only 36 percent of Australian respondents to the Accenture study said they expected to achieve high returns, well below China (56 percent) and South Korea (72 percent). However, Australians were well above respondents from the other country in the survey, Japan, where only 16 percent of executives said they expected to make high returns. Overall, from the four countries surveyed, 45 percent of respondents tipped high returns.

The greatest impediments to implementation of radio frequency identification technologies were costs and lack of standards, Accenture said.

"More than two thirds (70 percent) of respondents cited the overall cost of implementation as a strong barrier, followed by nearly the same amount (67 percent) who cited the cost of tags and readers and slightly fewer (62 percent) who cited lack of standards," the researchers said in a statement.

Of the Australians surveyed, 64 percent cited implementation and the same percentage standards as strong barriers.

Australians joined with their counterparts in South Korea and Japan in saying the greatest benefits of radio frequency identification technology would be across multiple organisations, while more than 90 percent of the Chinese executives surveyed said they expected to achieve more value within their own organisations.

Executives pointed to production visibility and inventory visibility as the areas in which they could reap the greatest rewards from use of radio frequency identification technology. Fifty-seven percent said they expected to see benefits in shipping and receiving productivity, 52 percent in order accuracy and 52 percent in returns processing.

Adoption is in a very early phase regionwide, with 34 percent of respondents conducting business cases, 16 percent pilot studies and only one percent rolling out programs.

The researchers surveyed 100 manufacturing and retail executives with radio-frequency identification technology decision-making responsibilities.