The benefits of Radio Frequency Identification - RFID are seemingly endless, but implementation practicality and efficiency are currently the main issues.
With RFID the overall benefits are:
- Wireless communication and identification
- Complete track & trace of supplies and storage
- No contact or line-of-sight is necessary to read data or for data transmission
- Immediate and real time information from data capture within the broadcast area
- Availability of historical dataon individual products manufacture date, purchase date, etc.
- Armed with more accurate information companies can make better decisions. Greater supply chain visibility in real time can bring about better quality control, better supplier collaboration and performance management
- Cost savings.
Recalls are a fact of life for most manufacturers/ suppliers and RFID traceability can help minimise their impact. Complete chain traceability can narrow the scope of recalls and minimise the associated costs. Further by effectively communicating to the general public how quickly a recall has been instigated to isolate the cause protects the brand of a product.
Waste reduction and improved inventory management from RFID deployment can further reduce costs. In addition, as traceability is improved buffer stocks, spoilage and stockouts can be minimised.
Labour costs can be reduced as RFID allows for lot codes, serial numbers and other information to be captured automatically with no human intervention required to align or scan items. Readers can process multiple items simultaneously without double counting, which enables every tagged item on a pallet to be recorded in a single pass.
Therefore RFID represents an opportunity to assure and enhance brand value by recording evidence of how, when and under what conditions the item was produced. If a manufacturer can ‘certify' to a consumer that its product is superior, e.g. when, where and how it was manufactured, it can anticipate greater market share and consumer loyalty.