| DO |
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| Pinch Pennies Many companies are not getting a return on investment for RFID. Be strategic about the items you tag and make sure the item is valuable enough-or offers a large-enough price margin-to warrant the cost of the tag. |
| Investigate Alternatives Bar codes and 2D bar codes can serve as an economical alternative to RFID in certain applications. Bar codes require a direct line of sight to read and they can't be read as quickly, but they may be able to hold the information you need at a much lower price. |
| Try Before You Buy Try a pilot before you go into full-scale production. There's a lot of learning that comes from small-scale implementations. |
| Be Secure Some tags provide no encryption, while others incorporate both authentication and encryption. The level of security you need depends on the application. Tags used for inventory may not need encryption, while RFID chips in payment applications need to be highly secure. |
| Think Outside the Box While many RFID implementations are geared at bar-code replacement, there are many inventive uses for the technology. Hasbro embedded RFID tags in Star Wars action figures with a reader that could address each figure by name. Aside from creating a nifty toy, the biggest benefit was to the RFID industry. That single application sold 30 million RFID tags, and it wasn't an application that anyone could have predicted, unlike bar-code replacement. |
| DON'T |
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| Shut Out Colleagues You need someone from IT and someone from operations before you start talking about implementing RFID. The technology is complex, and site design is important for accurate reading of tags. The location of a water pipe, for instance, may interfere with the ability to read RFID tags. |
| Think All Tags Are Created Equally RFID is a broad umbrella for many different types of tags. Passive tags have no internal power supply, so they are generally smaller and cheaper than active tags, but active tags carry more memory, can be used in advanced applications, and can be more reliable than passive tags. |
| Intrude on Privacy There's been a fair amount of controversy surrounding privacy with RFID tags attached to consumer products. Make sure to have a privacy plan in place, and be ready to communicate that plan to consumers. One hospital that wanted staff to wear RFID-enabled badges that tracked their location worked with managers to make sure it wasn't used to track smoke breaks or time in the lunch room. |
| Blindly Trust a Vendor The RFID market is going through a period of consolidation, so the vendor you choose today may not be in business tomorrow. Make sure that the vendors you choose are financially healthy. |
| Forget Important Questions Make sure to ask your vendor about the battery life in active tags, how close you need to be to tags to scan them, and how many devices can be tracked in the same zone. |