28 August 2009
Track Your Assets Better With RFID
Posted by articleranks under: Uncategorized .
Over the last decade, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become more popular and more advanced to help companies track and manage their fixed assets UK. However, the tech has not yet reached it’s optimial usage. At the moment the technology is very expensive to implement so it’s been restricted to expensive and high priority items. The ideal use of the technology would be to track items off store shelves for stock level purposes.
RFID is a form of tracking assets, similar to a barcode. A barcode uses a tagging system that stores information which is then read by a scanner. An RFID tag is a chip that can be accessed remotely using an RFID reader, it stores data about the item it’s attached to and then sends it to the reader. Radio waves are used by the reader to retrieve information off the chip.
Regrettably, asset tracking UK hasn’t reached this level, however, there are a great deal of companies in the US that are already using the technology. A few of the services that use the RFID tagging is public transport payment methods, libraries, museums and new passports. A large number of the companies using this tracking method are government funded.
Although many companies haven’t invested in RFID, they understand why it’s so important. In the last few years, tracking your assets has become a vital part of business. However, all companies knwo that auditing their assets slows down business. Many also find that after auditing, they have missed some of their assets.
Using RFID tags on a large number of your assets, you are able to track hundreds of your items instantly from a location within the tags range. This makes managing your assets a whole lot simpler.
Just one company that is using RFID tech is Unilever. They have taken over 20,000 items on their production line and added the RFID tags. These tags make it easier for them to audit their assets remotely, if this was done manually, they would end up shutting down the production process.
This is just one example of where RFID can help your business save money. There are many other examples. Another example is in the fire service, they can track equipment to save vital time. It also ensures that a rescue vehicle doesn’t travel to an incident without the required equipment.
However, currently tracking using RFID is not cheap. With the most advanced tags costing about $60, keeping track of your assets isn’t cheap. Hopefully as the development fees for the tags comes down, so will the costs to buy the tags. Once this form of tracking becomes more widespread, fixed asset register UK programs will become more widely used.
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