Capitalize On RFID Printer Improvements

Advances in RFID (radio frequency identification) printer technology make closed-loop applications much more capable of yielding a return on investment.

There've been several stories written about companies using RFID because they work with Wal-Mart or the DoD, but there's not nearly as much coverage on companies using RFID to help their businesses operate more efficiently, expecting a payback in a timely manner. This may be the year that changes, according to five industry experts I recently spoke with from Datamax Corp., Nashua Corp., Paxar Americas Inc., Printronix, and Toshiba TEC America. Brad Jarvis, VP of product marketing at Printronix, sums up the group's conviction, "Twelve months ago, RFID tag prices were too high, performance was inadequate, and tag write/encode speeds were too slow to meet the needs of most manufacturers. Today, that's no longer the case." So, what's changed so much in the past year with RFID? And, how can your company capitalize on these changes? Both answers have a lot to do with RFID printers.

One of the challenges with RFID in the past was the speed at which tags could be read/encoded. "The latest generation of RFID printers can encode, print, and apply tags at a rate of 100-plus cases per minute with a very high accuracy," says Jarvis. One of the reasons for this improvement is due to improvements in RFID chip technology and the label conversion process.