Industry Usage

RFID Solutions

The opportunities for RFID application are boundless, with many potential uses yet to be imagined. As for the here and now, the first deployments are heavily concentrated in supply chain management processes. These include warehouse/distribution center applications, container tracking, retail and point-of-sale, authentication and anti-counterfeiting, to name a few. Other areas that have also seen early adoption include library systems, access control applications, vehicle identification, airline baggage handling, contactless payment systems, identification markets (passports, licenses, etc.), and tire pressure monitoring systems. The Department of Defense (DoD) uses RFID technology to track high-value assets, among other things. Many commercial and industrial manufacturers use RFID to track work in progress, with some leveraging the technology in pursuit of continuous improvement objectives. As such, the Return on Investment (ROI) associated with RFID deployment is easy to quantify. Numerous case studies point to dramatic reductions in inventory costs, reduction of out-of-stocks, improvements in customer service, accuracy of outbound shipments, brand protection, consumer safety, and other benefits of strategic import.

For the most part, commercial and industrial RFID system deployments can be divided into two major application classes:

• Warehouse/distribution center inventory and logistics (case and pallet level)
• Individual product units (item level)

Warehouse and Distribution Center Tagging with UHF Gen 2

UHF Gen 2 delivers outstanding performance across the full spectrum of applications from pallets to items, even under the most demanding conditions. With the GrandPrix solution by Impinj comprising Monza and Monaco tag chips and the Speedway reader, UHF Gen 2-based systems deployed in distribution centers and warehouses are faster, easier to use, less costly to field, and more operationally robust than any other solution. Furthermore, an exclusively UHF Gen 2-based system brings the benefits of a single RFID infrastructure—one that operates flawlessly in all regulatory environments, leverages a single reader and tag chip solution, and is easily tailored via market-specific tag antennas and reader accessories for maximum performance across pallet, case, and item-level applications worldwide or within the enterprise.

Warehouses and distribution centers are extremely noisy environments. As such, a high-performance RFID system must be able to cope with wide ranging sources of RF interference caused, for example, by other readers operating nearby or other sources of interference like cell phones. The quality of the data harvested from your warehouses and distribution centers depends on read reliability. And read reliability depends on the levels of receptivity the tags and readers achieve in the operating environment. In short, your assurance of the best possible performance and read reliability depends on RFID products "Powered by Impinj."

Item-Level Tagging with UHF Gen 2

Thanks to innovations from Impinj, UHF Gen 2 has proven a potent agent for change in a space traditionally occupied by HF (13.56 MHz) technologies: RFID operating at the item level. The conventional wisdom that UHF is not suitable for item-level tagging—UHF tags are too big, UHF won't work on liquids, metals, or small items in close proximity, UHF has too great a range—ignores the fact that Gen 2 can exploit UHF near field communication just as easily and much more effectively than HF solutions. That means anything tagged with HF technology can also be tagged with UHF Gen 2 technology—and that includes items high in liquid or metallic content. More importantly this means that item-level applications can now leverage all the benefits that the Gen 2 standard brings to the supply chain at large.

It is, for all practical purposes, a perfect storm that coalesces a single worldwide standard, the flexibility to read at long or short ranges as desired, the ability to operate in the near field, far field—or both. It's a confluence of technologies that will not only fuel rapid RFID growth, but by virtue of advancing a single RFID infrastructure, also solve a huge part of the ROI puzzle (a UHF Gen 2 system not only delivers the lowest cost of ownership, it is also eminently scalable).

Furthermore, an exclusively UHF Gen 2-based system also brings the benefits of a single RFID infrastructure-one that operates flawlessly in all regulatory environments, leverages a single reader and tag chip solution, and is easily tailored via application-specific tag antennas and reader accessories for maximum performance across pallet, case, and item-level applications.