RFIDTags.com

Since the construction industry has taken a new interest in RFID technology, companies are discovering this can be used for numerous things such as tracking, inventory management and equipment management. Just in 2 years this technology has improved drastically and has decreased costs fundamentally, for many companies.

Recently construction sites are using material tracking management systems to provide site managers the capability of seeking the construction progress and knowing what materials are delivered.

This is probable and cost effective by using RFID systems and then tagging all products. This guarantees more accurate numbers of the quantity of all things delivered and helps company’s monitor what is being completed on the construction site.

The RFID systems are being used more frequently and companies are saving money. By using these systems it allows companies to see the wastage of materials, theft and check-in waiting times for all materials.

This also includes less paperwork, which saves a tremendous amount of time. Information goes from paper to electronic form and could include instructions for the vehicle driver to follow. The multiple documents that are handled daily from workers to drivers or drivers to workers is significantly decreased and all electronic.

Another benefit is how this technology has made it possible for communication to be immediate and any problems are resolved as soon as they become visible.

Can it be true? After all of the predictions of a hockey stick growth curve for RFID over the last 7-8 years finally materializing? It seems to me that the market will begin to fulfill some its early over-exaggerated growth predictions. I base this on several observations and various activities in different vertical markets.
1. Recently rfid inlay suppliers (Alien, UPM Raflatac, Avery Dennison) reported being out of stock of their most popular inlays – this is not business as usual.
2. Longer lead times for RFID readers from the top reader manufacturers with some big backorders
3. Baird reported that the Gen 2 Inlay market for 2010 would experience between 125% and 150% growth rate and the Gen 2 RFID market would experience in 2011 a 300% overall growth rate.
4. Boeing has recently partnered with Fujitsu to develop a RFID service to enable greater efficiency in aircraft maintenance operations. Boeing will begin to offer this service in the first quarter of 2012. This tells me when a company the size of Boeing decides to enter a market it must think that the market will be sizable in the near future
5. Retailers, including Wal-Mart, are investing in apparel item level tracking of products. This is an important shift in thinking. The key term here is “item level”. The retail industry has been slow to adapt RFID at the case and pallet level but seems ready to be much more aggressive in deploying at the item level. Chip, inlay, tag and smart label converters will finally be positively affected by the huge increase in the demand for item level RFID tags.

GPS tracking with RFID tags are currently available, but do you think it’s an invasion of people’s privacy?

There are two main reasons people are arguing this is ethical. One, it can help track children when they have wandered off or been abducted, and two, for Alzheimer patients who get lost and can’t identify who they are or where they need to be.

Because it is children and child abduction is becoming more and more frequent it seems this new technology is beneficial and essential, but does this mean this sophisticated tag, that uses satellites with RFID, will be able to track where your family is at all times?

However, it can only track a certain distance from the scanner. For example, if you have a chip embedded in your apparel and you walk in to the mall the scanner may pick up that RFID tag and know you’re there. This now sends them your information, where you bought that outfit or when it was purchased. This then allows them to be able to track where you are in the mall.

More recently, American Apparel has over 200 stores in 18 different countries. As you can imagine at times it can be hard to track all their retail transferring from place to place. For a chance to better their company and ensure that their stock was all there and to avoid losing sales, they decided to invest in an RFID to control its manufacturing, distributing and retail operations.

After extensive testing they discovered increased sales and a more accurate inventory. This is now implemented in all the stores in the New York area and in Santa Monica, California. For retailers, like American Apparel, this is beneficial in a different way and not to invade in their customer’s privacy.

Do you think RFID tracking should be allowed in clothing or should it be illegal because of privacy issues?

Did you know that almost every sport depends on the technology? From American to European, from football to hockey, most of the sports everyone has grown to enjoy depend on these new discoveries, and without them it wouldn’t be the same.

A few examples include the instant replay, wireless microphones for referees, and headsets for coaches and players. Since some of these inventions, technology has expanded in our sports world.

European Rugby teams are turning to RFID tags for the instant replay and taking their game to the next level. According to Sports Network, these teams can “transmit the exact coordinates of the ball and players at an astounding 2000 times per second. It can also be used to calculate movement, speed, accuracy, and even force of impact.”

Will US transition to this new technology and get rid of bad calls?

Other teams exploring this new technology include the NHL, which recently held its first broadcast in 3D and was a huge success. Currently there are enough teams participating in trying this technology that ESPN has launched their first 3 dimensional networks.

Could this be a new trend for sports?

According to RFIDjournal.com, in NFL, two stadiums are leading towards the RFID technology, to speed payments, increase customer insight and increase consumer spending – the Seattle Seahawks and the Philadelphia Eagles.

It has been almost 10 months since we did the initial launch of RFIDTags.com.  We have learned a lot by taking feedback from end users and the RFID tag manufacturers.   The new interface which we just launched in Feb 2010 is much more user friendly by grouping the RFID tags into four groups, which appear as tabs, and a total of 46 different categories.  The amount of people searching for RFID tags using search engines is also seeing significant increases from 40,000 to 70,000 searches per month over the course of one year.

RFIDTags.com is in position #2 when searching for “RFID tags” using Google.  We are also #2 and #3 for Yahoo and Bing respectively.  As expected we are capturing significant portions of this traffic and hopefully in the near future achieve the #1 position for the search term “RFID tags” on all search engines.

What we have learned and the software we have developed should allow for us to duplicate this success across our other RFID related domains.  Hopefully the RFID ocean will keep rising and our boat will still ride high on that ocean.