RFID: A Revolution in Asset Tracking
Over the last decade, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become more popular and more advanced to help companies track and manage their fixed assets. However, the current technology is not yet fully optimised for all businesses. Currently RFID tagging is too expensive to use on everything, so far it’s only really been used on the manufacturer stages. The ideal use of RFID would be to track individual items off the shop shelves.
RFID is a form of tracking, very similar to barcodes. A barcode uses a tagging system that stores information which is then read by a scanner. An RFID tag it attached to an item and stores information about the item on a chip, this chip is then activated and read using an RFID reader, all from a remote location. The reader sends out radio waves to connect to the chip and retrieve the data about the item.
In spite of the fact that, RFID asset tagging has yet to be univesally adopted by companies, there are a great deal of companies in the US that are already using the technology for other purposes. New passports, public transport payment methods, libraries and museums are just a few of the services that use the RFID tags. A great deal of the companies using this method of tracking are government controlled.
A large number of companies haven’t yet bought into RFID, despite knowing why it’s so useful. In recent years the important of tracking all your company assets has become ever more important. However, all companies know that auditing their assets slows down business. Some companies find that several months after auditing, they have missed a large amount of their assets.
By implementing RFID tags onto the majority of your assets, you can track and read hundreds of your items all at the same time. This helps you to manage your assets more simply.
An example of where RFID tags have been so useful is in the Unilever factory in England. They have attached over 20,000 tracking tags to assets on their production lines. These tags allows them to audit all of the items remotely, if they had to do it manually, they would have to shut down the production line.
This is just one example of where RFID can help your business save money. There are a wide range of examples. Other examples can be found in the emergancy services sector, they track pieces of equipments to help save time. It also ensures that a rescue vehicle doesn’t travel to an incident without the required equipment.
Unfortunately, tracking your assets with RFID is not cheap to do. Generally the advanced tags cost around $50, definately not making it cheap to track your companies assets. Hopefully as the development fees for the tags comes down, so will the costs to buy the tags. Once this form of tracking becomes more widespread, inventory tracking programs will become more advanced.