RFID has long been seen as a key technology for inventory control. The question has been when businesses would adapt it.

According to a recent survey conducted by Zebra Technologies, the turning point seems to be right now. In a survey of more than 1400 decision-makers and associates who manage and maintain warehouse or distribution center operations worldwide, RFID is very much now in their plans.

Zebra found that 32% of survey responders had already implemented RFID in their warehouses. An additional 39% had plans to install fixed, passive or handheld RFID readers and fixed industrial scanning solutions in the next year, while 19% plan to do so in the next two to five years.

“The significant growth of returns aligns with e-fulfillment growth over the last several years, and it is a mandate for change across every part of the supply chain,” said Andre Luecht, global strategy lead for transportation, logistics and warehouse, Zebra Technologies, in announcing the findings. “This means warehouse leaders must modernize their operations with technology solutions to handle returns and increase agility, inventory visibility and demand forecasting in order to improve efficiency and make better decisions in real time.” 
RFID has come a long way since Dr. Mario Cardullo first patented passive RFID fifty years ago. Zebra Technologies is one of the key leaders in the field, providing handheld and fixed RAIN RFID readers, antennas and printers for industries ranging from healthcare, retail and hospitality, to manufacturing, field operations and transportation and logistics.

Luecht also spoke about other automation tools for warehousing.

“We see warehouse operations as being ripe for automation and a greenfield for robots,” Luecht observed. “Yet, few are employing automation tools at the level needed to augment labor shortages and shorten fulfillment lead times. Warehouse leaders are utilizing their front-line workers for customer-centric tasks focused on quality assurance and accuracy, cost control and space utilization.

“Prioritizing customer order accuracy, returns, expedited put away, trailer loading and utilization over moving materials across an expansive warehouse footprint will prevail when given the choice and the deployment of autonomous mobile robots into the environment,” Luecht added. “ In fact, the more the low-value-added work is removed from the process with automation, the more important it will be to equip labor with the right technology for the tasks at hand.”

Luectht pointed out that Zebra has set a new standard to guide and accelerate warehouse modernization—fully supported by decades of field-proven innovation, experience from thousands of warehousing implementations and use cases, and an extensive partner network.
“Our unique Warehouse Maturity Model framework helps businesses comprehensively map hardware, software, services and solutions to the evolutionary phases of warehouse modernization – and address both short- and long-term goals,” Luecht said. “The perfect time to modernize warehouses is now and Zebra helps companies connect every mobile worker to their WMS and capture each inventory move, for holistic control and visibility.”