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Radio frequency identification or RFID is an old concept that has quietly become a large part of everyone’s life. RFID has been around for at least 90 years and was initially put into practice about 70 years, but not many people realized it. These days, you yourself are most likely scanned every day by an RFID reader and the things you purchase are certainly scanned at least once a week.

So what is RFID? Well, you can think of it as the update of the bar code although in fact, it is older than the bar code by 50 or 60 years. Bar codes were developed in order to integrate stock control with point of sales processing.

Everyone has seen this and is used to it: the sales clerk at the cash register takes the goods from your basket one at a time, looks for the bar code, flashes a light or a bar code reader over it and the cost of the article is added to your receipt.

What you do not see is that the computerized stock records for that item are lowered by one and the sales price is noted along side it. That procedure worked well for 40 years, but now there is a need for more information to be recorded than a bar code can accommodate and there is requirement for more stock control and even more speed at the check out. Nobody has any time any longer.

Enter RFID, an old technology brought back to life. RFID is the technology that they used to put in Second World War aircraft in order to identify friendly aircraft to the RADAR-controlled anti-aircraft guns. The same equipment, basically, that they still use in aircraft today to identify it to air traffic control. The difference is that until pretty recently, these radio signal emitters or transponders were as big as a suitcase and cost a lot of money.

These days they are the size of the tiniest coin in your change and cost about five cents. They win over the bar code because they can hold loads of information, like where and when and by whom an article was manufactured; how much it cost and how much it should be sold for; its colour, weight and description; which shelf and in which shop it should be kept on …. ad infinitum. The shop owner can write anything on that tag by means of an RFID printer.

And when it comes to the check out… No more scanning each individual article by hand, because each RFID chip or tag, as they are called in the industry, emits its own data on its own exclusive radio frequency, therefore so long as the RFID reader is within three or four feet of the basket, it knows what is in there instantly. No more emptying, scanning and reloading the basket.

In fact, no more check out clerk. Most people pay with a credit or debit card these days anyway, so as you walk past the RFID reader with your basket, you are scanned; you swipe your credit card through another scanner; if you are happy with it, you authorize the payment and the barrier raises for you to proceed to your car. You only need a check out clerk for the people who want to pay with cash. Cheques are being done away with soon anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID (radio frequency identification) chips or tags as they are better known are the size of the smallest coin in your purse, but they can hold huge amounts of information that can be manipulated in methods that can do fantastic things.

For instance, RFID tags are in most office identity tags and in a few passports, allowing the holder to pass through security quickly while keeping the building or the country secure.

They are a modern version of the bar code. Remember before bar codes and bar code readers? When a shop assistant had to key prices into the cash register, correct errors and look up prices that they could not remember? People do not have any time for that anymore.

It is OK at the newsagents, but picture a teenager typing in your two trolleys of weekly shopping at the superstore every Saturday. You would still be there on Sunday! Supermarkets have thousands of articles and dozens of special offers - no-one could remember that lot.

No-one could, but bar codes make it straightforward and so do RFID tags. Bar codes work well, but they have to be seen to be read. RFID tags send out their information on a unique frequency which can be read out of line of sight. In other words, an RFID scanner does not need to be able to see the tag to read it.

The scanner can see what is in your trolley without you having to unload it and as you pass by that scanner and pay for your things, they are deducted from stock straight away so that the warehouse manger can see what people are buying and what nobody wants to buy. So, if one brand of cat food is selling better than another, the manager will see that on the computer print-out and buy more of that make, thus keeping more people happy.

This use of RFID in inventory control or asset management to give it its more official title, can translate itself into other uses too. An RFID tag can be placed under your cat’s fur or in its collar so that you can find him if he gets lost. The police and the wardens scan stray animals for a tag as part of their routine these days. Zoologists have been doing this with wild elephants, big cats and other endangered species for years. Now you can have it done with your pets also.

Company vehicles, as assets of the business, often carry RFID tags and you can have one placed in your car to aid recovery if it is stolen. Baggage handlers at airports or bus terminals can (and do) use them to avoid lost luggage.

The US government requires RFID tags be used on all vehicles carrying explosives or dangerous substances and have done for nearly ten years. The US military is in fact the principal user of these tags in the world. RFID tags are used to track military assets such as armaments, battle tanks, fuel, containers, guns, you name it.

Some people are anxious about RFID technology. Where is the line between their convenience and their personal information? For example, they do not like getting junk emails from people that have been able to trace the purchases they made with their credit cards.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

In order to illustrate how RFID tags can greatly sway the fortunes of a business for the better, we shall look at a theoretical case below. Let us take the example of a furniture maker that specializes in supplying furniture to a hotel chain.

This may sound like an example with no relevance to typical small businesses, but in fact, hotel chains are awfully choosy and have no loyalty, so if you can satisfy 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 goods has already been determined by means of compulsory 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 problem was that the system was still subject to human error and items still went missing, which lead to management compensating by over manufacturing 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 involved in a hotel room, bathroom or lobby and if they are kept 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, running a warehouse like this is a nightmare with too much stress on key employees. It sometimes leads to imperfect deliveries or worse, incomplete delivery 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 item 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 walking around the warehouse hoping that they have covered everything, you could have radio sensors analysing 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 information, 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.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

RFID is the acknowledged acronym for Radio Frequency IDentification. The core of RFID technology is that every RFID chip or tag is capable of emitting a radio signal on a frequency totally unique to itself.

Therefore, every RFID tag must have its own identifying frequency and the RFID tag readers have be sensitive enough to be able to distinguish between frequencies that are only a very minute bit different from its neighbouring tags. The disparity can be infinitesimal.

Therefore, the technology needs to be precise and selective, but not fragile, because the equipment has to be used on the shop floor and by people who are often in a hurry and in weather that may be inclement.

In order for RFID to work, you need a tag, which is an upmarket kind of bar code and a radio receiver, often called a (tag) reader. However, whereas a bar code can only hold a small amount of information and the bar code reader has to be pointed at it, an RFID tag can store much more data and can be read from a hundred yards or more - even out of line of sight.

Passive tags will only divulge their information when required to to by a reader, whereas an active tag is continuously relaying its contents. Clearly, active RFID tags are more costly than passive tags, because they require a long life battery.

These tags can be utilized to track goods from the moment they leave the manufacturer of the items they describe to the in-bay of the vendor. The tags can then be up-dated or renewed and put in the warehouse. Once there, RFID readers can keep management up to date about what goods are where and if the sell-by-date is approaching.

This has implications for the levels of stock that a company needs to hold, the quantity of goods sold cheap because the sell-by-date is too near and for theft, all of which should boost company profits more than paying for the cost of the tags, the readers, the printers and the programmes.

At the click of a mouse, managers will be able to read how much stock they have in real time and if this is all linked to the checkout cash registers, which are the most and least profitable articles. This makes reordering easy . Easy to the point of computerization. For instance, when supplies of the top ten percent of the best selling products falls below 1,000 order 10,000 more. Automatically, no questions asked.

RFID has many other applications too. The principle mentioned above can be applied to farm animals, a call centre’s computers, a fleet of commercial vehicles, an inventory of household items, your pets, your car and even your garden furniture. Some people who work over a boundary are even having them placed under their skin so that they do not have to wait at customs.

And do not forget that criminals on early release are also tagged. It is the same technology.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is now concerned with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

All RFID tags are used to hold and ultimately send data. They can best be thought of as the replacement for the bar code. However, they have significant advantages over bar codes. For example: RFID tags can hold much more data than bar codes; they can be read from further away and they can in point of fact send information, not only store data.

There are three varieties of RFID tags: passive, active and hybrid. Passive RFID tags are the least expensive, because they are less complex. They need to be induced to disclose their data by taking power from an RFID reader. When the reader’s radio waves hit them, they reflect back their data. This is the kind of tag used in goods in a retail outlet or on crates in a warehouse.

On the other hand, active RFID tags have a battery, a transmitter and an antenna so that they are always transmitting. These devices are clearly a lot more expensive and so are used only on more expensive items such as a container, a battle tank, an airplane, on criminals ankle bands or on an animal of an endangered species.

The hybrid RFID tag is capable of transmitting, but it needs to be told to transmit; it has to be turned on by a signal. This signal could be a satellite passing over head. These hybrid RFID tags are also costly, but the battery lasts longer because they are not ‘always on’. These tags have the same applications as the active tags, but are appropriate for use where it is not critical to know where something is every minute of the day: for instance cattle in a field or goats on a mountain.

Passive tags can be attached permanently by sewing them into linings or putting them under skin because they do not have their own power source and do not wear out. This is a cause of anxiety to some people who worry about an invasion of their privacy or the erosion of their human rights.

Active and hybrid tags are most often clearly visible so that the batteries can be replaced as and when necessary. If this is going to unlikely to happen, as in the case of wild animals, the tag can have a biodegradable clasp which will break sometime after the probable life of the battery.

Some uses for RFID tags are on season tickets so that the holder can pass through the style more quickly than a customer paying by cash. It has uses in security; most of the ID badges you see pinned to jackets have RFID built into them so that security guards do not have to stop and question everybody.

They can be put into trucks that repeatedly cross frontiers so that they do not have to stop for identification. They can be placed on windscreens so that, as you drive through a motorway toll post, either your credit card is debited or the charge is added to your company’s monthly account.

Hospitals use them on patients so that they do not lose anyone or mis-identify them. RFID tags are useful in our daily lives but people are worried about criminals being able to read all this information too easily as well.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

How does one go about taking care of one’s property - one’s worldly belongings? Well, most people keep their money in the bank, store the jewellery in a safe and insure the rest. But insurance is not really taking care of your assets, is it? It is taking care of yourself so that you do not have renew them with your own money.

In the old days, and even now, I suppose in some countries, you would employ a boy to watch over your sheep or cattle or bring them in at night for fear of lions, wolves or thieves. These were an early kind of security guard and indeed wealthy people had and frequently still do have private body guards.

What if you had a substantial office with a hundred laptop computers - laptops because employees had to do field work as well? How would you keep track on all those? A car is another good case in point and construction site plant is being stolen all the time even from under the watchful gaze of (or with the help of) private security firms.

So what can you do? Get dogs? That works sometimes, but they can be poisoned. Get video cameras and passive infra-red movement sensors linked to a control centre? That works and many firms and private houses have it, but it is very expensive.

As a cheap alternative, the police were giving out free pens in the UK, which wrote in invisible ink. The idea was to write your postcode and house number. This ink became visible under a special kind of light. That is fine if you have a suspect or found property.

Bar codes are not practical, the pen is better. It all comes back to insurance or surveillance.

However, there is another technique that is becoming affordable. The concept has been around for about 85 years, but it was too expensive to use on anything less significant than an airplane or a battle tank.

I am talking about radio frequency identification or RFID for short. The idea is the same one that aircraft have been using since during the Second World War - a transponder emits precoded information in response to a demand from an RF reader.

Information concerning ownership and particulars of what the item is can be written to an RFID chip also known as a tag and the tag can then be taped inside the object that it is to safeguard.

There are two varieties of tag: the passive and the active. Passive tags will only reply if information is requested by a reader, whereas an active tag is always broadcasting.

Many entrepreneurs use RFID tagging to keep track of their assets. In the instance of livestock, most cattle are tagged these days. Most big offices have their IT devices tagged as well and we all know that clothing stores have been tagging garments for years, although maybe you did not know what that button was that they were taking off at the checkout.

Individuals are already tagging their dogs, cats and cars and it will not be long before these asset management techniques will be used extensively at home as well. Insurance companies may demand on it.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.