The RFID Buzz Factor

You see a lot of production managers squeezed by senior management to become compliant with RFID, and do so quickly and inexpensively. The problem is that these goals are not always compatible, but they do engender some creative thinking. One example I've heard concerns a product that is a case of oil in typical funnel-shaped bottles. It has a shipping label applied to the lower corner of the box. The initial, obvious solution was to upgrade the capabilities of the label printer to encode an embedded RFID tag. Unfortunately, the lower corner of the box is where all the RFID-absorbing oil is concentrated. The RFID-friendly airspace is at the upper side of the box where the bottles taper to the pointed funnel. This problem was caught in product compatibility testing, but the moral of the story is one you've heard before (and will keep hearing for a while) -- "RFID is not exactly like barcodes." Allow sufficient room in your implementation schedule to adjust such basic production considerations as label placement and handling. Source: Industry Week