Spring 2007

Can you cost-justify the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) in your business?

That challenge is thrown down to operators by printer manufacturer Printronix, which has come up with an eight-point check list for users. The company accepts that RFID tag prices are becoming more affordable and encoding speeds are increasing, and says RFID 'has become an attractive alternative for organisations of all sizes.'

But senior product marketing manager Andrew Moore adds: 'While RFID offers tremendous productivity and costs benefits, organisations must evaluate their operations to determine if automated labelling is the right business decision today.'

His check list includes the following:

• What are my projected case volumes this year?
• What is my typical application?
• Will there be cross-docking requirements?
• What are my conveyor or production line speeds?
• What size label will I be using?
• How can I manage tag quality?
• What are my lead times?
• Can I protect the process?

On the point of tag quality Moore warns that converters can't guarantee 100 per cent accuracy. 'An applicator must have a way to handle rejects, dispense the bad tags and make a duplicate tag.'