What applications might benefit your business?

People Visibility

Knowing exactly where all employees are within a building and by only allowing authorised access to specific zones within the building, helps to improve customer service, employee safety and productivity.

Wrist-tags provide a means to accurately identify patients and can be used to facilitate security and access control to restricted areas. With RFID readers installed in theatres, it is possible to monitor and record the time a patient spends in an operating theatre. This makes for more accurate billing and resolves disputes between surgeons/hospitals and medical aid insurance companies.

Each and every event, i.e. the movement of an asset or the entering and exiting of an employee, carries data relating to the date, time and zone of the event.

Asset Tracking

Ultra Long Range (URL) RFID technology can be deployed to provide a complete ‘smart’ building management system for the corporate environment. By enabling the tracking, monitoring and protection of all assets, including people, a more controlled and productive environment is created in which day to day business activities are handled more effectively and efficiently.

Knowing where your company’s assets are at all times and limiting the removal of such assets to pre-authorised personnel only, reduces incidents of theft and loss. Pre-authorisation is automated by linking particular assets to personnel tags and creating an electronic relationship between the two tags.

By linking the activation or de-activation of facilities like projectors, air-conditioners, lights, automatic doors and so forth to personnel tags in the presence or absence of such tags, companies have better control the costs utilising such facilities as well as the security of their employees by only allowing authorised access to specific zones within the building.

Another application, which aids hospital staff in their efficiency, especially when confronted with emergency situations, is the tracking of medical equipment. Hospitals are somewhat limited in the numbers of expensive equipment they keep. This equipment is moved around between wards, theatres and different floor-levels, and the case of life-threatening emergency, it is vital that the location of RIGHT equipment can quickly be pinpointed.

Security is further enhanced by the information that is recorded in the system. Each and every event, i.e. the movement of an asset or the entering and exiting of an employee, carries data relating to the date, time and zone of the event.

Logistics

The Supply Chain presents what is probably the largest and most viable market for RFID application deployment. Simply having the ability to track product or containers of product throughout the entire supply chain already lends itself to improved operational efficiency for ALL operators within the supply chain, from the supplier of raw material to the manufacturer, the transportation company, the wholesaler and the retailer. Knowing where product is and knowing when to expect product to be delivered, allows for pro-active decision-making, reduced loss of time (and money), improved productivity and effective planning and execution of all processes and activities within the entire supply chain, which ultimately leads to the ability to meet and satisfy customer demand.

Scheduling the transportation of product from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer is an enormous task and even a single delay within the supply chain can impact tremendously on several operations and processes, which then causes a ripple effect. RFID cannot eliminate unforeseen uncontrollable situations, for example a transport vehicle breaking down, but RFID can facilitate quick corrective action being taken to minimize the negative impact.

Quality control becomes more manageable with the ability to track the events relating to the life-cycle of a product or batches/lots of product all the way back to its origin. Delivery scheduling and the monitoring of routes and schedules – especially in the case of food products with temperature intolerances and sell-by-dates is one of the most difficult and complex tasks in the FMCG supply chain. The real-time characteristic of RFID technology enables continuous, dynamic monitoring, which allows for more effective planning and pro-active response.