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Time Trial: RFID vs. Barcode (its not even close)
What could you do with 83% more time?
RFID is changing the way organizations track and manage assets, with the potential to dramatically reduce the time spent on tasks like inventory counts and audits.
Just how much time?
Well, how about a little demonstration.
We tested how long it took to scan 27 standard barcodes versus 27 RFID tags.
Our test wasn’t conducted in a laboratory, but it provides a simple demonstration of RFID’s potential: in this case, an 83% reduction in scanning time.
Scale those results up and the difference becomes much more interesting.
At the rates demonstrated in our test, scanning 1,000 items would take nearly 18 minutes with barcodes versus just over 3 minutes with RFID.
At 10,000 items, you’re looking at roughly three hours versus about 31 minutes.
For a warehouse managing tens or hundreds of thousands of assets, those minutes can quickly become hours of labor.
Reducing hours to minutes can translate to savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So, How Does RFID Work?
The biggest difference is simple: barcodes require line of sight. RFID doesn’t.
A barcode scanner needs to “see” each barcode, which generally means positioning and scanning items individually.
RFID uses radio waves to communicate with tags. A reader can identify multiple RFID tags without needing to visually locate and scan each one.
That difference opens up possibilities far beyond faster inventory counts.
Consider the airline industry.
Aircraft contain emergency equipment that must be routinely accounted for and inspected. With traditional identification methods, checking that equipment can mean physically accessing compartments and verifying items individually.
With RFID-tagged equipment, personnel can verify the presence and status of those assets without opening every compartment and manually checking each item. Now apply that same thinking to a warehouse, manufacturing facility or distribution center.
How much time does your team spend finding, counting and verifying assets simply because that’s the way it has always been done?
RFID adoption isn’t going to happen everywhere overnight. But organizations willing to explore the technology today have an opportunity to find efficiencies their competitors may still be overlooking.
Ready to take the next step? We can send you a free sample pack.
Innovation moves fast. Leaders move first.
