Our RFID Subject Matter Expert Chris Brown Named AIM North America’s 2021 Professional of the Year

TSC Printronix Auto ID is excited to announce that our RFID Subject Matter Expert, Chris Brown, has been selected as one of the AIM North America organization’s 2021 Professionals of the Year. This award is presented annually to recognize an individual with innovative and exceptional contributions to the development of the automatic identification and mobility industry through their work as a contributor, collaborator, or mentor.

Brown has been part of the AIDC industry for over 20 years. He has extensive global expertise with large manufacturing and supply chain companies, and RFID technology specializing in encoding and numbering standards.

“We place a high value in serving the AIDC community and are very pleased that Chris’s contributions to the industry have been recognized by AIM. Chris has worked tirelessly to ensure the marketplace is aware of key RFID information, including numbering systems and encoding, educating people across a wide range of platforms,” said Andy Edwards, Director of Product Management at TSC Printronix Auto ID. Edwards added that “the work Chris is doing around RFID encoding schemas is very important for the industry, and we look forward to continuing to educate about this topic.”

As an active member of several AIM and RAIN RFID workgroups, Brown has been a vocal participant helping to identify, discuss, and educate on industry challenges. His work has included extensive insights into the RFID numbering systems specified by the ISO and GS1 standards.

Broad Contributions to RFID Education 

Brown’s efforts around the tag data standards and the proper use of specific tag bits (ISO versus EPC) are critical to help professionals avoid the future risk of tag clutter. He has elevated the challenges faced by the industry if proper encoding practices are not followed. Education is a key to solving this issue and he has partnered with other community members to explain best practices.

Brown recently published an article in the RFID Journal introducing the industry to the basics of ISO-based RFID encodings which covers this in more depth. “Tags that are not encoded according to a data standard will eventually interfere with tags from other applications, also known as tag clutter. I often use the example of my suitcase being tagged at the airport for baggage tracking. But what if I am also lugging hundreds of tags for a tradeshow within my suitcase? Imagine if Delta Airlines' baggage-tracking system suddenly started reading some of the tags in my suitcase and confused these tags for baggage tags?” wrote Brown, in the article.

He then delved into more detail about the two main families of tag-data encoding standards:  GS1's EPC Tag Data Standard (TDS) and various ISO-based standards.

In addition to this piece, he’s partnered with Voyantic on a three-part webinar series that covered what barcode professionals need to know about RAIN RFID data, encoding, and tag selection and sourcing. And Brown has partnered with other TSC Printronix Auto ID partners to expand how RFID technology works in specific applications, including horticulture inventory management.

Learn More About RFID Technology

Brown’s work has advanced our mission to help our partners’ succeed with high quality solutions, while furthering AIM’s mission to bring cooperation, development, and standardization of AIDC technologies.

TSC Printronix Auto ID is consistently leveraging Brown’s insights online to support our industry. To stay abreast of our latest contributions and discussions about trending topics in this arena, read our blog and follow us on social media.