GS1 EPCglobal RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance Guides released by GS1

Raed Al-Samahiji, Founder, President & CEO of GS1 Bahrain the sole representative of EPC Global in Bahrain said "RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) is a technological method for deterring and detecting theft of consumer goods."

He further added:

"RFID-based EAS tags, based on the GS1 EPCglobal Gen 2 standard, are fixed to an item's packaging or to the item itself. These tags can be removed and/or disposed by consumers or sales associates after purchase."

The goal of RFID-based EAS is to leverage the benefits of EPC (Electronic Product Code) and RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) for EAS functionality. These include increased visibility, improved inventory tracking, and process productivity along the supply chain extending to the retail sales floor with the advantages of EAS item-level theft deterrence, detection, and protection.

The Strategic Overview Guide and Technical Implementation Guide for GS1 EPCglobal RFID-based Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) were developed within the framework of the EPCglobal community, more specifically the RFID-based EAS Phase 2 Joint Requirement Group.

The members of this group gathered the requirements and scenarios to help understand the needs of an RFID-based EAS solution. Based on this input, the guides were developed to illustrate where EAS implementation is possible for reusable and disposable tags and approaches to enabling the business use cases outlined using existing GS1 and GS1 EPCglobal standards.

The next phase of this effort will include updates to the technical standards to address tags that are embedded in products and applications and product categories that will involve these embedded tags (non-easily removable tags) that will require electronic deactivation or tag alteration.