INTRODUCTION - RFID

     Retail businesses devote considerable time, expense and effort to move products from manufactures to customers.  RFID system technology is on the cusp of revolutionizing the supply chain models for the retail industry.  This revolution will be realized by eliminating the necessity to “hand read” or manually inventory products, allowing for real-time monitoring of products’ shipping status, and even more significant, integrating this RFID data into the industries overall supply chain management systems.  By eliminating the need for line-of sight inventory, significant reductions in time and labor cost will be realized. Integrating this real-time data into the larger supply scheme results in reduced inventories, warehouse labor, stock outs, shrinkage and improved customer and shipping fulfillment rates. 

    RFID system technology and utilization is in the infancy stage of implementation.  Although the physics involved in RFID tags has been understood since the 1940s and RFID tags have been in commercial application since the 1970s, current RFID systems have significant reliability and business implementation issues to overcome.