Tony Furness

Biography

Prof Anthony Furness, BSc, MPhil, PhD, CEng, MIEE

Prof Furness is currently Technical Director AIM UK (Association for Automatic Identification Manufacturers) and Co-founder for the National Centre for Radio Frequency Identification. He was appointed Visiting Professor in Automatic Identification and Data Capture, Centre for Automatic Identification and Intelligent Systems, University of Central England where he was previously engaged as a Consultant Technologist. These posts were preceded by eight years as Director of Postgraduate Engineering Courses at Keele University, Director of the AIM UK/Keele Automatic Identification Initiative and Head of the Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) Research Group and Director of the Staffordshire Design and Technology Centre (1986-89).

He has presented and published widely on AIDC and has over 30 years experience in engineering, design and research. He is a member of various automatic identification interest groups, Member of the AIDC 100 Group (International Group of AIDC Specialists) and in 2002 received an AIM UK 2002 Special Award for “major contribution to developing awareness and understanding of the use of AIDC technologies in the UK and around the world”.

Abstract

The importance of standards, both technical and application based, cannot be over emphasised for technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) that have universal relevance and significant potential for open systems usage or rationalisation in usage over multiple user points and applications. Library systems may be viewed as platforms for effectively applying RFID and exploiting the benefits that can be provided through appropriate standards.

International standards have been developed, and are also in the process of being developed, to satisfy various supporting needs with respect to RFID. They include technical, conformance and application standards.