RFID Inventory Management

There is no list price — an inventory system is quoted against a written specification. The useful way to budget is to split it in two. One-off hardware is a capital item sized by your number of stores, doors and counting teams: Android UHF handhelds such as the CX1500N for cycle counts, fixed readers and antennas for dock doors or smart shelves, a desktop RFID printer if you encode labels in-house, and the integration work. The tag is the recurring line — one label per stocked unit, priced by inlay, label size, chip, face stock, printing and volume. At high annual volumes that recurring tag spend typically becomes the larger number, so model both lines over the life of the deployment rather than comparing hardware quotes alone. Send SKU count, annual unit volume, packaging types and site layout for a quote.

In most cases yes, because the reader is a data source rather than a system of record. Every reader Identium supplies ships with an SDK, a demonstration application and source code, so your own developer or software vendor can read tags from inside the application your staff already use rather than running a parallel system alongside it. Where the software cannot be modified at all, the CX Flow Pro utility that ships on the CX1500N Android handheld types each tag read into whichever input field has focus, so an existing screen, spreadsheet or web form takes the data as it comes, and it can also POST each read to an endpoint of yours in real time. The integration decision that actually matters is which field the EPC maps to — normally a serial held against your existing SKU or item code, with description, price and location staying in your database.

One tag can do all three, and that is the main economic argument for tagging at item level. A passive UHF label on India's 865-868 MHz band carrying an EPC Gen2 (ISO/IEC 18000-63) number can be counted on the shelf with a handheld, read at the till by a short-range desktop reader to decrement stock, and read again at the exit by a gate reader such as the HLR200 — all from the same encoded serial. Gate behaviour is environment-dependent, so portal width, tag placement and how goods are carried through decide what a doorway actually catches. Two things do not come from that tag. A staff or customer credential is HF at 13.56 MHz under ISO/IEC 14443, typically MIFARE or DESFire, and stays a separate card. And an exit alert only means something if your software already knows whether that serial was sold.

Source tagging is usually cheaper to run and harder to set up; encoding at goods-in is the reverse. If vendors apply the label in their own factory, stock arrives countable and you avoid a labelling station — but you must first issue a written tag specification covering inlay, label size, placement on the pack and the numbering scheme, then audit samples from each vendor against it, because a label placed over foil or against a liquid-filled container will not read reliably. Encoding in-house with a desktop RFID printer keeps control in one place and suits mixed, imported or unbranded stock, at the cost of labour at receiving. A sensible sequence is to encode in-house during the pilot and move high-volume lines to source tagging once the specification is proven. Settle who owns the EPC numbering before either, or you will end up with duplicate serials.

Run a bounded pilot and measure against your own baseline rather than a headline figure from any vendor. Take one department or aisle, count it manually, count the same stock with a handheld the same day, and reconcile item by item — that comparison, on your own stock, is what convinces a finance team. Alongside accuracy, record three things: read rate by packaging type, since a foil pouch and a corrugated carton behave very differently; how long a count genuinely takes with your own staff rather than a trained demonstrator; and how long it then takes someone to investigate and clear the discrepancies the count throws up, which is the cost most pilots forget to price. Include at least one metal-shelf bay and one densely packed bay, and keep the pilot on the exact inlay and reader you intend to deploy, because results do not transfer between tag types.