In order to illustrate how RFID tags can greatly sway the fortunes of a company for the better, we shall look at a hypothetical example below. Let us take the example of a furniture maker specializing in supplying furniture to a hotel chain.
This may sound like an example with no relevance to normal small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are extremely choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can please these people, you can please anyone.
The main requirements of the hotel chain are that orders are met and on time, the quality of the supplier's products has already been considered to be sufficient by means of enforced ISO 9000 quality control and factory visits.
The hotel furniture manufacturer decides to introduce passive RFID tags to follow its items from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery, that is the hotel or its storage area.
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 concern was that the arrangement was still subject to human error and items still went missing, which resulted in management compensating by over producing and over stocking 'just in case'.
That is a common enough phenomenon., but the difficulties are multiplied when you think of all the separate items of furniture that are implicated in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are stored in a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Items get lost, forklift drivers make errors, people forget to fill in inventory forms, get sick and take holidays.
In short, administrating a warehouse like this is a nightmare with too much pressure on key employees. It sometimes leads to incomplete deliveries or worse, imperfect supply tickets. Sometimes the order might be complete but the hotel would think it was not because the delivery ticket was incorrect.
If this company were to initiate RFID asset control they could affix an RFID tag to completed sticks 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 forewarning when orders are running late or are still incomplete.
Not only that but the tag can say what else has to be manufactured and whether the object 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 traipsing around the stockroom hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors reading every tag in a warehouse the size of a football pitch, reporting back to a central computer where the storehouse manager can have access to real time intelligence, not just the state of affairs at close of business the previous day.
This should enhance the manager's chance to manage, cut down on waste, ensure complete orders delivered on time and so higher levels of customer satisfaction, which should lead to more repeat orders.
This may sound like an example with no relevance to normal small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are extremely choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can please these people, you can please anyone.
The main requirements of the hotel chain are that orders are met and on time, the quality of the supplier's products has already been considered to be sufficient by means of enforced ISO 9000 quality control and factory visits.
The hotel furniture manufacturer decides to introduce passive RFID tags to follow its items from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery, that is the hotel or its storage area.
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 concern was that the arrangement was still subject to human error and items still went missing, which resulted in management compensating by over producing and over stocking 'just in case'.
That is a common enough phenomenon., but the difficulties are multiplied when you think of all the separate items of furniture that are implicated in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are stored in a 200,000 square foot warehouse. Items get lost, forklift drivers make errors, people forget to fill in inventory forms, get sick and take holidays.
In short, administrating a warehouse like this is a nightmare with too much pressure on key employees. It sometimes leads to incomplete deliveries or worse, imperfect supply tickets. Sometimes the order might be complete but the hotel would think it was not because the delivery ticket was incorrect.
If this company were to initiate RFID asset control they could affix an RFID tag to completed sticks 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 forewarning when orders are running late or are still incomplete.
Not only that but the tag can say what else has to be manufactured and whether the object 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 traipsing around the stockroom hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors reading every tag in a warehouse the size of a football pitch, reporting back to a central computer where the storehouse manager can have access to real time intelligence, not just the state of affairs at close of business the previous day.
This should enhance the manager's chance to manage, cut down on waste, ensure complete orders delivered on time and so higher levels of customer satisfaction, which should lead to more repeat orders.
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.