Distributed Information & Automation Laboratory

Working with Industry

DIAL works with leading international companies in areas ranging from RFID technology development to through-life product information management. Interaction with industry takes a variety of forms including long-term research collaborations, commissioned research, consultancy and executive education.

Building Radio Frequency IDentification for the Global Environment (BRIDGE)

BRIDGE was a European Union funded 3-year Integrated Project addressing ways to resolve the barriers to the implementation of RFID in Europe, based upon GS1 EPCglobal standards.

The project consists of a series of business, technical development and horizontal activities. Seven Business work packages were set up to identify the opportunities, establish the business cases and perform trials and implementations in various sectors including anti-counterfeiting, pharmaceuticals, textile, manufacturing, re-usable assets, products in service and retail non-food items.

The project also included an important research and development program in various aspects of RFID hardware, discovery services, track & trace analytics for supply chain control and security.

A series of horizontal activities will provide training and dissemination services, enabling the adoption of the technology on a large scale in Europe for the sectors addressed by BRIDGE and beyond.

BRIDGE involved 31 partners and was coordinated by GS1. BRIDGE was an Integrated Project supported by the European Commission's IST Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), under contract 033546

Project timeline

1 July 2006 - 31 August 2009

Researchers involved

Mark Harrison, Alexandra Brintrup, Thomas Kelepouris, Tomás Sánchez López, C Y Wong, Yacine Rekik, Paris Pennesi, Damith Ranasinghe, Maurizio Tomasella, Duncan McFarlane, Andy Shaw

Industrial partners

GS1, BT, AT4 wireless, SAP Research, Sony, Nestlé, Carrefour, COVAP

ETH Zürich, Fudan University, UPC, TU Graz, CAEN RFID, Confidex, Domino, JJ Associates, UPM Raflatac, AIDA Centre, Verisign, Melior Solutions

Bénédicta, Gardeur, Galeria Kaufhof, Northland Professional

GS1 UK, GS1 France, GS1 Germany, GS1 Poland, GS1 Spain, GS1 China

Specific activities involving DIAL researchers at Cambridge

WP1: Led task 1.6 and developed a specification for smart object systems and contributed to a handbook on sensor-enabled tags

WP2: Led task 2.5 on high-level design of Discovery Services

WP3: Led WP3 (Serial-level supply chain control), development of probabilistic track & trace algorithms

WP6: Reviewed deliverables from pharmaceutical traceability pilot, provided feedback based on previous work in Drug Security Network project, analysed WP6 data in WP3 track & trace analytics framework

WP8: Led WP8 (Manufacturing pilot) - initially with Nestlé, later with COVAP as the pilot partner

WP10: Led WP10 (Products In Service pilot) together with Sony, focusing on item-level tagging in consumer electronics and benefits even after sale

WP11: Led tasks on analysis of item-level tagging pilots at Carrefour

WP12: Contributed the material for the BRIDGE advanced technical training course

Project website

www.bridge-project.eu

Related links

BRIDGE project - final report

BRIDGE public deliverables