How IoT Can Help Rejuvenate RFID Technology
RFID: mature technology with wide applications in supply chain
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Key Takeaways
⇨ RFID has been leveraged in supply chain, warehousing and inventory management for decades and is considered a mature technology.
⇨ RFID can be integrated with IoT to build solutions that currently do not exist thereby enhancing value from existing RFID investment.
⇨ Warehousing and Inventory management are prime areas for combining these two technologies to deliver game changing results.
New digital tools and technologies on the horizon bring many promises. The hype for many of these emerging technologies is well deserved. However, before you embark on a mission to embrace emerging technology, you must consider whether you have already leveraged some mature technologies to their full potential in your supply chain. One such technology is RFID. The article assumes that readers know what RFID technology is and how it works. The technology has been leveraged in supply chains for decades now and is considered a mature technology.A common perception I see is that RFID technology has delivered the value it was supposed to, and now is the time to leverage other emerging technologies to replace RFID. Gartner’s hype cycle indicates that the plateau of productivity has been reached as far as RFID technology goes, which is correct, but only if we view and leverage these two technologies separately. So if you consider RFID technology on its own, it has probably reached its plateau of productivity, but within the areas, it has conventionally been leveraged. The beauty of technology and algorithms is that you are limited only by your imagination and intuition. My perspective is that RFID technology was never harnessed to its full potential and a part of that aspect was that we were limited by technology. Despite decades-old technology, many organizations are not yet leveraging RFID across their supply chain. Why that is the case and how they can improve can be a very exhaustive topic and is not the focus of this article. This article hypothesizes that RFID technology, in conjunction with new technologies like IoT, can generate much more value in the supply chain world, specifically inventory management.
