Francois Monette at Cogiscan<br>answers some questions about RFID

evertiq: What will the benefits from this cooperation's be for Panasonic and Cogiscan respectively? Cogiscan: Panasonic: RFID technology will upgrade and enhance Panasonic's existing feeders and machines, as they will become more intelligent. By working with Cogiscan, Panasonic have instant access to a proven solution, can benefit from faster time to market and lower development costs. Cogiscan will continue to expand OEM partnership strategy and take one more step towards becoming a de-facto standard. This tight collaboration enable us to developped a better-integrated product with Panasonic machine and software. evertiq: RFID technology has for a couple of years now been described as a promising cost effective technology but recently reports came in saying that one of the main applications for this technology, the grocery handling, will not adopt this technology as it was expected to. Cogiscan: RFID exist since World War II, applications continually increase factory automation. ROI is very different on the electronic manufacturing shop floor than in the consumer supply chain. EMS and OEM are consistenly working on reducing their cost, improving quality and productivity, RFID can definitely help them. evertiq: What do you think will be the most successful applications for the RFID technology? Cogiscan: There are many successful applications but Cogiscan will continue to focus on electronic and discrete manufacturing and develop specialized solutions such as tags, readers and software for this specific market. evertiq: Where will the growth in this technology be at largest size initially? Cogiscan: In our market, Cogiscan works on a two-phase approach. First, growth will come from closed-loop factory automation solution for OEM and EMS with re-usable tags (i.e. smart feeder, smart reel). Secondly, RFID tags across the supply chain (i.e. smart labels, etc). evertiq: Where do you think the technology will be industrialized? Cogiscan: Like any other electronics product, high volume production will go to China and low-cost regions.