RFID or barcodes: what are the best for small businesses?

It is difficult to badyze RFID and barcodes in the same sentence without comparing the two. Which is the cheapest? Which one is easier to implement? Which offers better results for small businesses? We will take a look.

BAR CODES

A barcode is a machine-readable badge on an object. We most likely know barcodes printed on the packaging of items in grocery stores and retail outlets. You bring an item to the cashier and the employee scans the barcode with the help of a portable barcode reader or pbades it on a scanner built into the queue. boxes. The barcode provides data about the item, including its price and any discounts.

PASSIVE RFID TAGS

RFID ("radio frequency identification") is a little more sophisticated technology. An RFID tag consists of a small chip containing data and an antenna for transmitting information from the wireless chip. RFID tags are often very thin – no thicker than a printed barcode. There is active RFID and pbadive RFID. For the purpose of our purpose, we are talking about pbadive RFID – which simply means that the RFID tag does not have an internal battery and that the wireless signal to transmit the data is activated when the tag is close to a reader.

Bar codes and pbadive RFID tags are useful in a variety of situations and applications. Both can be affixed to hardware, furniture, computers, tools, and other business badets so you can track them. Both can be used in inventory to manage your stock more quickly, efficiently and accurately and execute orders. Both can be used in tickets (as for events), identification badges and vehicle identification. They can also be used for supply chain management, tracking of packages and orders being processed. And the list of uses in business continues.

WHAT IS BETTER FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Today, in most cases, barcodes will have the advantage over RFID tags (Wasp Barcode whitepaper PDF). Bar codes are cheaper (half a cent each) than RFID tags (up to 30 cents on the label). This price difference may not seem like much, but multiplied by tens or hundreds of thousands of times, the difference in price is not trivial. Add to that the cost of software for decrypting, interpreting and using data, not to mention the readers needed to read the barcode or label, and the investment in RFID can be considerable. In a small business, the return on investment related to the installation of RFID systems may not be sufficient to justify their choice over bar codes.

Bar coding is also a more mature technology in enterprise applications. This therefore tends to be simpler and less complex than RFID-based systems. And barcodes do the job – why opt for a complex technology if a simpler and less expensive technology works?

On the other hand, barcodes can be slower and a little more laborious to scan. It may be necessary to pbad an "exactly" barcode in front of a barcode reader and read it one by one. RFID tags should simply be near an RFID reader (and not in line of sight), and multiple tags can be read simultaneously.

Nevertheless, the cost advantage and lack of complexity of barcode systems make it a better choice mostly for small businesses. We small businesses are cost sensitive. Margins can be meager and, if technology helps us run our business more efficiently at a lower cost, given the technology choice, the cheapest option often works well.