For a business to become truly competitive and highly efficient, it should learn to adapt with a variety of changes. One of these will be the use of technology to ensure the security of their data and to administer proper flow of operations. You can get all these and more with an RFID, or radio-frequency identification card.
Defining an RFID Tag
A tag that is considered to be an RFID will be something that you can attach to an animal, product, or even human being. The card, which can react through radio waves, contain all information for identification of the object or person it’s attached to. As to how fast it can be detected will depend on the power of the machine. Some are extremely sensitive that even if you’re meters away you can already be detected. Others will only function if you’re near the RF scanner.
There are also two components that make up the RF card. One of these is the integrated circuit, which has three functions: (1) modulates the radio signals from the RFID to the scanner and vice versa, (2) store and process information, and (3) other functions that could have been customized by the enterprise. You can also find an RFID that doesn’t have any chip attached to it, yet it still possesses some special parts that allow it to function like any circuit-based RFIDs. This one is a lot cheaper, and you can place it directly into any product.
Uses of RFID Tags in Business
So far, there are already numerous business sectors that are adapting RFIDs into their normal operations. Here are some of the uses of the RFID:
1. Better Management of Mobile Assets. Perhaps one of the greatest uses of the RFIDs is in tracking assets that are mobile. These may come in different forms. For example, there are a number of libraries that are attached RFIDs in their books, so they can monitor the people who were borrowing and still not returning them. Jewelers and renters of expensive jewelry are making use of the RFID to determine the whereabouts of their collection. Several airports and airlines, such as the Emirates, use RFIDs so they can keep track on baggage, which do often get lost while in transit. Credit card companies such as the American Express are attaching magnetic stripes on their credit cards, allowing any store to verify the identity of the cardholder instantly.
All in all, there are countless industries that are spending a lot of money on moveable assets just so they will be able to improve their services to their customers or to supply the much-needed support their internal operations may be looking for. Yet there is a very low utilization of the assets since they cannot actually monitor the real condition as well as the exact locations of some of their equipment. This will then boil down to immense financial loss at their end, as these mobile assets may not be utilized immediately or that they aren’t found at all. If equipment are in these states, they are treated as lost items and are written off from their list of assets. The companies, therefore, need to buy a new one to secure availability.
2. Security and Safety of Products. In the recent 2007 Identity Theft or Fraud Statistics Report, there are more than 3 million projected cases of credit card fraud. These could be composed of individuals whose information have been stolen for their personal gain or situations wherein credit card companies fail to keep confirm the authenticity of certain transactions of their clients. The bottom line is, when theft happens, the enterprise loses a lot.
The RFIDs become excellent support for fight against counterfeiting and identity theft. For example, there are several establishments nowadays that are attached RFIDs on their products such as DVDs and software to help determine whether the products that have been taken out of the shops have been stolen or not. If these items are legitimately bought, customer service representatives need to remove them from the items sold. On the other hand, businesspersons who consider handheld devices and their personal computers to be investments to their companies opt to make use of RFIDs so they can track and trace these goods, if ever they have been stolen by somebody else. As a matter of fact, there’s a huge possibility of recovering the items with the use of RFIDs.
When it comes to highly sensitive documents, such as those produced by a variety of financial services as well as government agencies, RFIDs can be utilized to increase security among these documents, making them difficult to access by any unauthorized person.
3. New Inventory System. The principles behind RFID have permitted for the development of the auto-ID system, which have been used by companies that are handling massive amount of inventories in their stores as well as in the warehouses. This interesting device can actually accurately monitor how much you currently have as your stocks.
Wal-Mart, one of the largest stores in the world, utilized the auto-ID system, and their academic studies have revealed that since its use the company was able to reduce the percentage of out of stocks for items that are selling from 0.1 to 15 units every day to 30 percent.
Moreover, you can also lower your maintenance and inventory costs, such as what happened in Boeing 787 Dreamliner. One of the most expensive airplanes in the world, the parts and other equipment being used are not only hard to find but are also heavily priced as well. With the use of the RFID, personnel can already kept track on these equipment regardless of their size and shape. Moreover, with the reduced maintenance needed for the airplane, there is also no more need for a lot of technicians and facilitators for Boeing. Within six months’ time, the company was able to save almost $30,000 in their labor costs.
Nevertheless, despite the benefits that enterprises may reap from the RFIDs, there are still few but major concerns that need to be addressed immediately. For one, the frequencies of RFIDs in the United States don’t work in Japan and several countries in Europe. Furthermore, there are no clear standards that govern their use and proper implementation.
- Post Time: 12-10-15 - By: http://www.rfidang.com