Chronology Of Events Leading To Development Of Worldwide Standards For EPC Network

1999 Auto ID center is formed at MIT. It represents a coalition of 100 companies and five research universities. Members include major retailers such as Wal-Mart, consumer goods manufacturers such as Gillette, the Department of Defense, and some RFID technology suppliers. Its mission statement is to explore application of RFID technology in supply chain applications.
May 2003 MIT finalizes agreement with Uniform Code Council (UCC) and Electronic Article Numbering (EAN) International to form a joint venture to drive standards for Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network.
June 2003 Wal-Mart tells its top 100 suppliers they will be required to put RFID tags on cases and pallets by January 2005.
September 2003
  • EAN International and Uniform Code Council formally announce the new joint venture now known as EPCglobal. Its mission statement is to launch a worldwide effort to drive adoption of EPC technology.
  • Version 1.0 of EPCglobal Network is released. It offers a complete set of technical specifications for every component in the EPC Network.
November 2003 Wal-Mart informs its suppliers it will make class 1 version 2 - now known as UHF Generation 2 (UHFG2) communications protocol specification - its standard.
December 2003 Department of Defense announces its intention to support UHFG2 standard.
January
2004		 Target and Albertson's issue RFID mandates.
April 2004 Four proposals for UHFG2 communications protocol are submitted to EPCglobal. They are:
  • Flexworks: Matrix RFID's submission of its class 0 plus spec, which adds write capability to its current class 0 tag spec.
  • Q: Supported by Alien, Tyco, and others. It represents class 1 v1 read/write.
  • Performance Group: Supported by Atmel, EM Micro, BTG, RFIP
  • Unified Group: Supported by fourteen companies including TI, Intermec, Zebra, Phllips, and Samsys
May 2004
  • EPCglobal board of governors unanimously votes to discontinue work to develop requirements for certifying class 0 and class 1 tags for standards conformance.
  • Alliance-building activity between the Unified Group, the Performance Group, and the Flexworks Group results in the original four submissions being reduced to two. One of the submissions is backed by both the Unified Group and the Performance Group.