RFID Journal Staff asked 8 years ago When an item is removed from a rack, could a system let us know how much space in the rack remains?
—Vikrant (India)
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Vikrant,
An RFID solution cannot determine, on its own, the size of an object within a warehouse. With an RFID system, you generally place a transponder on an asset. The transponder has a serial number associated with that asset. When the item leaves the warehouse, the transponder is interrogated by an RFID reader at the dock door, and the object is removed from inventory in your warehouse's database.
You can have employees associate a location with each asset and RFID tag. So if a box measuring 1 meter by 1 meter by 1 meter (3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet) arrives with a tag on it, or if you place a tag on it, the tag can be associated with not just the item but a specific rack location, which is recorded in the database by reading an RFID tag on that location or a QR code. If each asset's size is recorded in the database, for example, you could know that a 1-meter cube is occupying location one on shelf two on rack 12. When the tag on the box is read at the shipping bay, you could know that that space is now available for a new object to be placed. Software could be developed to optimize the location of each asset due to arrive, and workers could be instructed to put arriving assets in the optimal location.
—Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal
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