THG Formulations

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 must be sensitive enough to be able to differentiate between frequencies that are only a very tiny bit different from its neighbouring tags. The disparity can be microscopic.

Therefore, the technology needs to be sensitive and discriminating, 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 have the desired result, you have to have 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 quantity of information and the bar code reader has to be pointed at it, an RFID tag can hold much more information and can be read from a hundred yards or more – even out of line of sight.

Passive tags will only reveal their information when required to to by a reader, whereas an active tag is constantly 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 items from the moment they leave the manufacturer of the goods they describe to the in-bay of the vendor. The tags can then be up-dated or replaced and stored in the warehouse. Once there, RFID readers can keep management informed about what goods are where and if the sell-by-date is impending.

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, bosses will be able to read how much inventory they have in real time and if this is all connected to the checkout cash registers, which are the most and least profitable items. This makes reordering simple . Easy to the point of automation. For example, 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 as well. The principle mentioned above can be applied to farm animals, a call centre’s computers, a fleet of commercial vehicles, an record of domestic items, your pets, your car and even your garden furniture. Some people who work over a boundary are even having them put under their skin so that they do not have to wait at customs.

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

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few 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.

How does one go about taking care of one’s assets – one’s worldly belongings? Well, the majority of people keep their money in a bank, put the jewellery in a strongbox and insure the remainder. But insurance is not really taking care of your possessions, is it? It is taking care of yourself so that you do not have replace them with your own money.

In the old days, and even now, I presume in some places, you would employ a boy to watch over your sheep or cattle or bring them in at night for fear of big cats, wolves or rustlers. These were an early kind of security guard and indeed rich people had and frequently still do have personal body guards.

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

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

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 realistic, 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 answer to a request from an RF reader.

Information regarding ownership and details of what the item is can be written to an RFID chip also known as a tag and the tag can then be glued inside the item that it is to protect.

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

Many business people use RFID tagging to keep track of their assets. In the instance of farm animals, most cattle are tagged these days. Most large offices have their IT goods tagged as well and we all know that fashion stores have been tagging clothes for years, although maybe you did not know what that button was that they were taking off at the till.

People 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 too. Insurance companies may demand on it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few 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.