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RFID (radio frequency identification) chips or tags as they are better known are as big as the smallest coin in your purse, but they can store huge amounts of data that can be used in methods that can do incredible things.

For instance, RFID tags are in the majority of office identity tags and in a few passports, enabling the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country secure.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop keeper had to type prices into the cash register, correct mistakes and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but picture a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the superstore every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Supermarkets have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers – no-one could remember that lot.

No-one could, but bar codes make it straightforward and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags emit their data on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not have to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can see what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are deducted from stock straight away so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wants to buy. So, if one brand of cat food is selling better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more official title, can translate itself into other uses too. An RFID tag can be placed under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets also.

Company vehicles, as assets of the firm, often carry RFID tags and you can have one put in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to prevent lost luggage.

The US government insists that RFID tags be placed on all vehicles carrying ammunition or hazardous substances and have done for nearly ten years. The US military is in fact the principal user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as armaments, battle tanks, fuel, containers, artillery, you name it.

Some people are anxious about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For instance, they do not like receiving junk emails from people that have been able to trace the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Radio frequency identification or RFID is an old concept that has quietly become a big part of everyone’s life. RFID has been around for at least 90 years and was initially put into practice about 70 years, but not many people knew about it. Nowadays, you yourself are most likely scanned every day by an RFID reader and the items you buy are definitely scanned at least once a week.

So what is RFID? Well, you can think of it as the update of the bar code although in fact, it is older than the bar code by 50 or 60 years. Bar codes were developed in order to integrate stock control with point of sales processing.

Everyone has witnessed this and is used to it: the sales clerk at the cash register takes the goods from your trolley one at a time, looks for the bar code, flashes a light or a bar code reader over it and the cost of the item is added to your receipt.

What you do not see is that the computerized stock records for that item are lowered by one and the sales price is noted along side it. That procedure worked well for 40 years, but now there is a need for more information to be recorded than a bar code can accommodate and there is requirement for more stock control and even more speed at the check out. Nobody has any time any longer.

Enter RFID, an old technology brought back to life. RFID is the technology that they used to put in Second World War aircraft in order to identify friendly aircraft to the RADAR-controlled anti-aircraft guns. The same equipment, fundamentally, that they still use in airplanes today to identify it to air traffic control. The difference is that until pretty recently, these radio signal emitters or transponders were the size of a suitcase and cost a lot of money.

These days they are the size of the tiniest coin in your change and cost about five cents. They win over the bar code because they can hold loads of information, like where and when and by whom an article was manufactured; how much it cost and how much it should be sold for; its colour, weight and description; which shelf and in which shop it should be kept on …. ad infinitum. The shop owner can write anything on that tag by means of an RFID printer.

And when it comes to the check out… No more reading each separate item by hand, because each RFID chip or tag, as they are called in the industry, sends out its own data on its own exclusive radio frequency, so as long as the RFID scanner is within three or four feet of the trolley, it knows what is in there instantaneously. No more unloading, scanning and refilling the trolley.

In fact, no more check out clerk. Most people pay by credit or debit card these days anyway, so as you walk past the scanner with your basket, you are scanned; you swipe your credit card through another scanner; if you are happy with it, you approve the payment and the barrier lifts for you to carry on to your car. You only need a check out clerk for the people who want to pay with cash. Cheques are being abolished soon anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

In order to illustrate how RFID tags can really influence the fortunes of a company for the better, we shall take a look at a theoretical case below. Let us take the example of a furniture maker that specializes in the supply furniture to a hotel group.

This may sound like an example with no relevance to typical small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are awfully choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can satisfy these people, you can please anyone.

The main requirements of the hotel chain are that orders be complete and on time, the quality of the supplier’s goods has already been determined by means of compulsory ISO 9000 quality control and factory visits.

The hotel furniture manufacturer decides to use passive RFID tags to track its items from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery, that is the hotel or its depot.

Under previous conditions the producer had employed a few people to walk around with bar code readers and clip boards carrying out quality control and tracking the fulfillment of orders.

The problem was that the arrangement was still subject to human error and items still went missing, which resulted in management compensating by over manufacturing and over stocking ‘just in case’.

That is a common enough scenario., but the difficulties are multiplied when you think of all the different articles of furniture that are involved in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are kept in a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Goods get lost, forklift drivers make mistakes, people forget to fill in inventory forms, get sick and take holidays.

In short, running a storehouse like this is a nightmare with too much pressure on important employees. It sometimes results in imperfect deliveries or worse, incomplete supply tickets. Sometimes the order might be complete but the hotel would think it was not because the delivery ticket was incorrect.

If this firm were to initiate RFID asset control they could affix an RFID tag to completed pieces of furniture. The tag would say where it is, what it is, whom it is for, when it has to be delivered and what else makes up part of the order. The tag is being read continuously by the warehouse’s RFID readers warning when orders are running late or are still short.

Not only that but the tag can disclose what else has to be manufactured and whether the item itself has passed quality control. It can also tell you which defects someone has found with it. In short, instead of a couple of people walking around the warehouse hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors analysing every tag in a warehouse the size of a soccer pitch, reporting back to a central computer where the warehouse manager can have access to real time information, not just the state of affairs at close of business the previous day.

This should enhance the manager’s opportunity to manage, cut down on waste, guarantee complete orders handed over on time and so superior levels of customer satisfaction, which should lead to more repeat orders.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

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All RFID tags are used to store and ultimately remit data. They can best be seen of as the successor to the bar code. However, they have significant advantages over bar codes. For instance: RFID tags can hold much more data than bar codes; they can be read from further away and they can actually send data, not only store information.

There are three kinds of RFID tags: passive, active and hybrid. Passive RFID tags are the least expensive, because they are less complex. They have to be asked to disclose their information by taking power from an RFID reader. When the reader’s radio waves hit them, they echo back their information. This is the sort of tag used in goods in a retail outlet or on crates in a warehouse.

On the other hand, active RFID tags have a battery, a transmitter and an aerial so that they are always transmitting. These units are clearly a lot more expensive and so are used only on more expensive items like a container, a battle tank, an aircraft, on criminals ankle bands or on an animal of an endangered species.

The hybrid RFID tag is capable of transmitting, but it has to be told to transmit; it has to be turned on by a signal. This signal could be a satellite flying over head. These hybrid RFID tags are also costly, but the battery lasts longer because they are not ‘always on’. These tags have the same uses as the active tags, but are suitable for use where it is not vital to know where something is every minute of the day: for instance cows in a field or goats on a mountain.

Passive tags can be attached permanently by sewing them into linings or putting them under skin because they do not have their own power source and do not wear out. This is a cause of anxiety to some people who worry about an invasion of their privacy or the erosion of their human rights.

Active and hybrid tags are most frequently plainly visible so that the batteries can be changed as and when required. If this is going to be unlikely to take place, as in the case of wild animals, the tag can have a biodegradable clasp which will break sometime after the probable expiry of the battery.

Some uses for RFID tags are on season tickets so that the holder can pass through the style more quickly than a customer paying by cash. It has uses in security; most of the ID badges you see pinned to jackets have RFID built into them so that security guards do not have to stop and question everybody.

They can be put into trucks that repeatedly cross frontiers so that they do not have to stop for identification. They can be placed on windscreens so that, as you drive through a motorway toll post, either your credit card is debited or the charge is added to your company’s monthly account.

Hospitals utilize them on patients so that they do not misplace anyone or misidentify them. RFID tags are useful in our daily lives but people are concerned about criminals being able to read all this information too easily as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID is the recognized acronym for Radio Frequency IDentification. The basis of RFID technology is that every RFID chip or tag is capable of sending a radio signal on a frequency wholly unique to itself.

Therefore, every RFID tag must have its own identifying frequency and the RFID tag readers must be sensitive enough to be able to distinguish between frequencies that are only a very minute bit different from its neighbouring tags. The disparity can be microscopic.

Therefore, the technology has to be sensitive and selective, but not fragile, because the apparatus has to be used on the shop floor and by people who are often in a hurry and in weather that may be inclement.

In order for RFID to work, you need a tag, which is an upmarket kind of bar code and a radio receiver, often called a (tag) reader. However, whereas a bar code can only hold a small amount of information and the bar code reader has to be pointed at it, an RFID tag can store much more information and can be read from a hundred yards or more – even out of line of sight.

Passive tags will only divulge their details when asked to by a reader, whereas an active tag is constantly broadcasting its contents. Clearly, active RFID tags are more expensive than passive tags, because they have to have a long life battery.

These tags can be utilized to track goods from the moment they leave the manufacturer of the items they describe to the in-bay of the vendor. The tags can then be up-dated or renewed and stored in the warehouse. Once there, RFID readers can keep management up to date about which goods are where and if the sell-by-date is impending.

This has implications for the levels of stock that a business has to hold, the amount of items sold cheap because the sell-by-date is very near and for theft, all of which should increase company profits more than funding the cost of the tags, the readers, the printers and the programmes.

At the click of a mouse, managers will be able to read how much stock they have in real time and if this is all connected to the checkout cash registers, which are the most and least profitable items. This makes reordering simple . Easy to the point of computerization. For instance, when supplies of the top ten percent of the best selling products falls below 1,000 order 10,000 more. Automatically, no questions asked.

RFID has many other uses as well. The ideas outlined above can be applied to farm animals, a call centre’s IT hardware, a fleet of commercial vehicles, an record of domestic items, your pets, your car and even your garden furniture. Some people who work over a border are even having them put under their skin so that they do not have to wait at customs.

And do not forget that criminals on early discharge are also tagged. It is the same technology.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.