Retail Solution By RFID

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is evolving as a major technology enabler for tracking goods and assets around the world—from the point of manufacturing through to the retail point-of-sale. Because of its potential benefits, many of the world’s largest retailers have mandated RFID tagging for pallets and cases shipped to their distribution centers by 2005. In the retail industry, this is likely to impact around 200,000 manufacturers and suppliers, and will fuel the global market for hardware and software to support RFID.

An RFID Overview

RFID systems consist of tags, readers and a range of applications to track, monitor, report, and manage items as they move between physical locations. These devices are supported by a sophisticated software architecture that enables the fast, or near time, collection and distribution of location-based information.

All information stored on RFID tags, such as product attributes, dimensions and prices, accompanies items as they travel through a supply chain or other business process. This information can then be scanned wirelessly by a reader at high speed and from a distance of several yards.

RFID Benefits

• Warehouse and distribution productivity
• Retail and Point-of-Sale productivity
• Out-of-Stock reduction
• Inventory management
• Shrinkage reduction
• Supply chain error reduction
• Capital Asset tracking and management
• Counterfeiting reduction
• Accounts Receivable efficiency
• Promotional execution improvement

RFID Costs and Considerations

• Tags
• Readers
• Software and integration
• Data Warehouse
• Business processes and systems integration
• Sufficient computing power
• Redundancy with existing barcode systems
• Problems with reading tags on liquid and metal items