RFID and You

You may or may not have heard of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) however in the coming years we WILL all be effected by it in one way or another. Whether you are a warehouse manager or a humble consumer (which is everyone), we are all part of the world wide supply chain. We all shop at the supermarket (unless you live in a cave or a kaput, in which case more power to you), and we all buy clothes, therefore we will all see changes.

This article is broken down into 5 sections.

Imagine!

The Supply Chain

The Technology

The Problem

The Conclusion

Imagine!

Now bare with me. Imagine if you will, the kitchen of every home will not only be the heart of the house but also the brain. Imagine a washing machine knowing what clothes you have put into it and setting the most appropriate cycle, even telling you when you have put a red sock in with your whites. Imagine a microwave oven that knows what ready meal you have put in it and cooks it to perfection. Imagine the most powerful machine in your home is not the PC but the fridge freezer, this most mundane white good networked to your cupboards and the internet will know what you have bought, how quickly you've eaten it and eventually profile your eating habits in order to do the shopping for you. Not only that, it could check that all your food is within it's sell by date, check the required storage temperature and adjust accordingly.

If however you do decide to go to the supermarket, purely for sentimental reasons, the days of the checkout queue will be gone. Simply swipe your credit card, enter your pin and walk out the door.

We have all heard this before in the press or on the TV, but the difference is, the technology exists, and is already being used!

The Supply Chain

Although all of us will be effected by the change in kitchen technologies, some of the biggest changes will be in the supply chain. From factory to warehouse, from warehouse to truck, and from truck to shelf, tracking not pallets or boxes, but at individual item level will be possible, saving millions, if not billions a year. How? By simply reducing theft for a start! Big price tag items are increasingly being sold by supermarkets, some of which are relatively small, like CD's, DVD's and even disposable razors. If we look at DVD's for example, how many are quietly slipped into the pocket of workers each year, somewhere down the supply chain? I don't have the figure but I'm sure we are talking in the tens of thousands, at £14.99 each, you can do the math.

Reduction in theft is just one benefit of RFID. By knowing exactly what is on your warehouse rack will enable far better store shelf fulfilment, and smoother more accurate deliveries. As all retailers know, if it's not on the shelf you can't sell it.

The Technology

Without going into to much detail, boring myself and you I will talk a little bit about the technology. This is split into two areas, the scanners, and the tags.

The Scanners

These come in two forms, the first being an archway that you simply walk through with the product or wheel a pallet/trolley through. The second is a more targeted method of a hand held scanner, making scanner of an individual product or tag easier.

The Tag

This is were the technology gets a bit more complicated. There are two main types of tags, passive and active. Passive tags have no battery to submit it's unique code, it simply sits there waiting to get all excited. As it passes near a scanner, the scanner charges the tag and it starts shouting its name. However, because it has no power source itself, the distance between the scanner and the tag must be relatively close.

The opposite type of tag is the active tag, this has it's own power source, a small battery. Because it powers itself, it can be further away from the scanner and shout its name, or number further. On top of these two basic types of tags you can also have tags that can be rewritten, meaning that their name and information can be changed any time, and thus recycled. There are tags that can store additional information up to 32kb, tags that are water proof, heat proof, you name it. If the type of tag you require does not exits today it will tomorrow.

The Problem

If you think about it there hasn't really been that many advances in technology or hardware in particular in the last couple of years. Yes PC's have got quicker, devices have got smaller, but when was the last new idea? Because of this you have to expect a couple of teething problems. Unfortunately the RFID teething problems are being a bit of a pain.

The first problem is cost (isn't it always). The cost of the tags are simply too high at the moment to put them on or integrate them in every product we buy. This makes the brainy kitchen ideal not feasible at the moment. The price of the tags vary greatly from pennies to pound, the simple fact is they need to be a fraction of a penny to be a possibility. This however will happen, as with every new technology.

The second problem is a bit more of a pain. At the moment the readers have a bit of a problem reading the tags through either fluid or metal. Now with some products this isn't an issues, however if you have a pallet full of tin beans, it simply will not read all the tags 100%, or in fact anywhere near 100%.

I have complete confidence that these problems will be over come. As someone far more intelligent then I once said, necessity is the mother of all inventions.

The additional issue, which isn't really a RFID problem but will be a stumbling block for ‘robo kitchen', is Global Data Synchronisation. Now this subject is an article in it's self, so very, very briefly, GDS is a world wide database of products, containing all the information you need to know about the product, such as name, manufacture, ID code, storage conditions, etc, etc. This ensures that no two products can be confused, without it true identification can not be fully guaranteed. See I told you it would be brief.

The Conclusion

I believe the conclusion is fairly obvious. RFID is already being used at pallet level, within tens of thousands of warehouses across the world. Some supermarket chains are even insisting using it, forcing suppliers to pick up the technology. The next step will be the snowball of tagging from pallet level to case level and then down to the individual products. However the price and technical hitch will need to be sort out first. Once the product tagging becomes common place start saving for you new microwave oven!

If you wish to discuss RFID with Chase Consultancy we would only be too happy to help you decide if it is the right route for you and also help you decide on a software/hardware vendor.