What is worth a label.
A label earns its place on things that are numerous, that pass known points, and that nobody would fit a battery to. Four kinds of item meet that description.
- Stock at doors and docks
- Tools
- Returnable containers
- Equipment
Four kinds of item.
Stock
Cartons, cases and pallets, read as they come in at a receiving door and as they go out at a dispatch dock, and compared with the documents that say what should have passed.
Tools
Hand tools and instruments, each with a label of its own, read by a handheld scanner when a count is taken or by a fixed reader at a storeroom door.
Returnable containers
Crates, cages and roll containers that go out on a vehicle and are meant to come back. Each read adds a sighting to a container's history: out through this dock, read on that vehicle, in through that door.
Equipment
The items between stock and vehicles. A label records them whenever they pass a reader, while a GPS tracker or a beacon follows the few that have to be watched all the time.
Label, beacon, tag or tracker?
| If the item is | It wants | Because |
|---|---|---|
| One of thousands, and identical to the next | An RFID label | Only a label is small and simple enough to go on each one. |
| Moved around a building all day | A mesh tag | Your client has to see where it is, not only where it was read. |
| Taken out with vehicles | A BLE beacon | The vehicle's tracker hears it, so it is seen wherever the vehicle goes. |
| Valuable, and out on its own | A GPS tracker | Only a tracker reports its own position from wherever it happens to be. |
Where RFID is the wrong choice.
If your client's real question is where something is at this minute, a label will disappoint. Labels are read at points; they are not followed in between. That question belongs to a tracker, a beacon or a mesh tag.
If the question is whether what should have passed a point did pass it, RFID answers it better than anything else on this page.
One item can carry more than one.
Nothing stops a returnable cage from carrying a label for the dock door and a mesh tag for the warehouse floor, or a trailer from carrying a beacon while the pallets on it carry labels. On one platform, your client finds both in the same account.
- A label for the points an item passes
- A battery tag for the places it has to be found
- One account for both
Next
Ask about RFID for your clients.
Tell us what your client wants recorded item by item, and where those items pass. We answer with where InSight RFID stands, whether early access suits the job, and what the rest of the platform would add.