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RFID Technology

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology

Introduction

The radio frequency identification has been introduced for a long time but it is now becoming an integral part of the industries with related technological developments and standardised bodies. The use of RFID technology can be traced back as far as the WWII. It was utilised to distinguish between the aircrafts of enemies and allies. However, this technology has been evolving ever since. It is now applicable to track animals and identify speeding vehicles on toll roads, build security access, and to pay electronically at petrol stations (Tu & Piramuthu, 2008).

Discussion

An RFID automatic system is made up of a unique identification number assigned to a particular item on an identity tag, which is then attached to or embedded in the item with a chip capable of storing the unique identification number. Networked RFID readers and data processing systems collect signals from multiple tags at high speeds and pre-process the data, and one or more networked databases store the product information. Most often, multiple units of the same commodity authenticate simultaneously. A good example is when multiple shipments arrive to a warehouse or retail store (Zhou & Peng, 2007).

Accordingly, one of the biggest demands of supply chains regardless of the presence or absence of product authentication is maintaining the product integrity of shipments sent and received by the suppliers and customers throughout distribution and internal supply chains. Even with a perfect product authentication scheme, supply chain shipment documentation can contain wrong quantities of a product, or even the wrong product type. Manually checking the product integrity regularly throughout a supply chain is labour and human resource intensive. Ensuring the accuracy of deliveries and shipment even where humans are regularly involved in manual labour movement of the goods is also manually intensive and time consuming where shipments are on a strict schedule (Murray, 2006).

The consequence is that responsible supply chain personnel spend time auditing, investigating and correcting exceptions, documentation inaccuracies, or actual product loss. All of these reduce product integrity in the supply ultimately impacting customers in the form of higher distribution costs and resultant higher prices and/or loss of profit. There is a popular misconception that counterfeiting and product theft is limited to luxury (defined as very high price per unit) goods. It is true that these luxury goods are primary targets of counterfeiters but in the last few years, materials science and advances in off the shelf manufacturing processes have allowed for the expansion of illicit actors into industries and products that directly affect consumer health and safety like aircraft and automotive parts as well as medical supplies and pharmaceuticals (Fleisch & Tellkamp, 2005).

RFID Tags

RFID tags consist of a microchip and antenna. Currently there are three types of tags used in industry: passive, semi-passive, and active. Tags are classified based on their power supply. Passive tags have no power supply; instead, passive tags draw power from the radio waves emitted by the RFID reader. As a result, passive tags have relatively low ...