Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58915
Kelley MBA supply chain academy students in the RFID lab. RFID technology is being adopted by businesses of all types, including warehouses, shipping operations, distribution centers, and hospitals. RFID technology is still in its al model at a U.S. business school, according to school officials. "We were able to design and read tags through a system, develop interfaces to other systems, and generate met- rics; but until this gift, we were not actually able to produce the tags," says Daniel Conway, a visiting clini- cal associate professor who runs the school's RFID lab. TOOLS OF THE TRADE More flexible benchmarking with AACSB International's DataDirect Business schools often benchmark their programs against peer and aspirant institutions to know where they stand in the marketplace. In an effort to make such compara- tive information more accessible, AACSB International recently rolled out its new online subscription service, DataDirect. The service's objective is to offer schools more flexibility and customization when it comes to obtaining benchmarking data, says Dan LeClair, vice president and chief knowledge officer for AACSB. "Schools have asked us for much more flexibility in terms of how they receive information," says LeClair. "Before DataDirect, when schools asked for benchmarking reports, the only information that schools could custom- ize was the group of schools included—the reports were standardized. With this new system, schools can not only select their comparison group, but also focus on particular variables. They also can access the system online and receive information in a variety of formats, such as Excel, PDF, or HTML." DataDirect was created with the help of New York- based Peerfocus, a provider of association-oriented research Web engines. With the Peerfocus product, AACSB and DataDirect are able to provide schools with anytime-anywhere access to member information within a secure online environment. The system includes five years of data, which allows schools to follow historical trends as well as obtain data- driven snapshots of the current market. All AACSB-member schools have free access to manage their own data and download standardized reports through DataDirect. Cus- tomized information is available through time-limited sub- scriptions—$150 for three months or $500 per year. For more information about DataDirect, visit www. aacsb.edu/datadirect/. BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2006 49 RFID technology utilizes smart media, which can incorporate text, graphics, and bar code information into "smart tags" that allow organi- zations to track inventory, packages, and even people. Unlike standard UPC bar codes, RFID tags do not require line-of-sight access to be rec- ognized—they can be detected over a wide area. Because of its versatility, infancy, but as companies use RFID more frequently, business schools will need to produce more gradu- ates skilled in this area, says M.A. Venkataram- anan, chair of undergraduate programs and the Lawrence D. Glaubin- ger Professor of business administration at Kelley. A fully equipped RFID lab, he says, is one way to help students stay at the "leading edge of this emerging technology." ■ DATABIT A study by the Association for Computing Machinery aims to calm those who fear offshoring will take too many IT jobs from the U.S. The study estimates that only 2 percent to 3 percent of computing jobs will move from the U.S. annually over the next decade. z TYAGAN MILLER