New RFID Solutions for Specific Business Needs

Got a problem? Judging by what will be on display at LIVE! 2012, RFID solutions providers have been hard at work developing new products to address real business concerns.

By Mark Roberti

Tags: Asset Tracking, Health Care, Innovation, Inventory / Warehouse Management, IT/Infrastructure, Manufacturing, Retail

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Mar 26, 2012—Radio frequency identification technology has come a long way—much longer, in fact, than most people realize. How do I know this? Because I was surprised by some of the entries submitted for our 2012 Best in Show award—which will be presented as part of the RFID Journal Awards at this year's RFID Journal LIVE! conference and exhibition, to be held on Apr. 3-5, 2012—as well as for our Coolest RFID Demo contest. And I follow this industry ever day.

For a list of award finalists, see Finalists Unveiled for Sixth Annual RFID Journal Awards. And to learn more about the planned demonstrations, see RFID Journal Introduces 'Coolest RFID Demo' Contest. I'll discuss a few of these below.

One challenge that companies face is associating tagged items on, say, a store shelf with a particular location. Most solutions involve reading a location tag, which indicates where tags are read, but this can be imprecise since a person might pick up a location tag on the shelf next to the one being scanned. Convergent Systems has created a real-time location system (RTLS) plug-in for handheld RFID readers, so a user can determine the device's precise location and thus can associate tag reads with that location.

Produce firms want to know when lettuce and other perishables are exposed to temperatures outside an acceptable range, in order to reduce the incidence of spoilage. RFID sensors can help, but they only work when a tag is in the vicinity of a reader. Intelleflex has addressed this problem with its Best in Show entry, which has yet to be publicly released.

Companies want to know what is happening within store fixtures, but they do not want to manually perform inventory counts every hour or so. With this in mind, Seeonic developed a SightWare electronics module that automatically captures RFID tag data for consumer products within a fixture. The information is uploaded to the cloud, where authorized personnel can log in to view real-time inventory data and receive replenishment recommendations from Seeonic's Seeniq decision-support tool.

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New RFID Solutions for Specific Business Needs

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