Author: instaquirk

Why does every business need to track their inventory?

Small business owners of today have considerable advantages over those of only a few decades ago. Technological advances make many business aspects more efficient and offer a number of effective tools.

From basic information technology to logistics, marketing, and human resources, there are affordable and efficient ways of performing manual functions and tasks that were previously tedious, including ways of Inventory tracking.

Inventory tasks include:

1. Planning for seasonal activities for companies shipping large quantities of products.

2. Anticipating shortages.

3. Anticipating growth in demand from promotions and added marketing success.

4. Providing the necessary financial reporting information.

An effective inventory approach will:

1. Achieve maximum discounts on the purchase level.

2. Improve negotiating a position with vendors and shipping sources.

3. Help meet overall customer expectations and needs.

4. Control Working capital investment.

5. Minimize the cost of ordering too often and the need for rush delivery.

6. Minimize shortage and out-of-stock costs.

7. Lower capital costs for excess inventory.

8. Reduce losses due to outdated inventories.

Omnia produces RFID tags which are small microchips plus a small aerial that may contain a range of digital information about a specific item.

RFID Tags are embedded in plastic, paper or similar material and attached to a product or packaging, a pallet or container, or even a van or truck.  An RFID reader interviews the tag, transmitting and receiving radio signals from and to the tag. Using special computer software the information the reader collects is collected and processed. Readers can be placed in a factory or warehouse at different positions to show when goods are being moved.

RFID technology helps to identify and record individual products and components and track them from production to point-of-sale throughout the verticals. This process does not require direct line-of-sight and creates inventory visibility in hand, thus helping to make proper use of it. With the help of this technology, each inventory/stock movement can be automatically stored on the system.

The use of RFID tagging for stock control offers several advantages over other methods such as barcodes:

1.Tags can be read remotely, often at a distance of several meters.

2. Several tags can be read at once, enabling an entire pallet-load of products to be checked simultaneously.

3. Tags can be given unique identification codes so that individual products can be tracked.

4. RFID tags can be overwritten, enabling information about items to be updated, eg when they are moved from one part of a factory to another.

Over the past few years, the costs associated with RFID tagging have fallen and continue to fall. The benefits of more efficient stock control and enhanced security make it particularly attractive to retailers, wholesalers or distributors stocking a wide range of items, and to manufacturers producing volume runs of products for various customers.

Suitable Omnia RFID Tags:

RFID & Railway Industry

From one of the first deployments of RFID on rail cars in the mid-1980s to the inception of railroad standards for RFID in the 1990s, the widespread use of RFID on railways has grown rapidly in multiple applications.

Across countries such as South Africa, Finland, Germany, Sweden, the United States, and India, railways are becoming increasingly automate and smarter with the use of auto-ID. Benefits do not stop at companies owning railways or railcars, but apply to people and companies dependent on railways for their own and/or their goods to travel safely and efficiently.

Benefits from using RFID on railways:

1. Decreased Human Error

2. Decreased Logistical Delays

3. Decreased Quantity of Lost/Stolen Items

4. Decreased Fraud

5. Decreased Operating Costs

6. Increased Visibility

7. Increased Customer Satisfaction

8. Increased Customer Service

Railway Management Systems

Goods which travel by rail can be costly to manage. The cargo ranges from car parts, construction materials, and energy resources such as gasoline, coal, and compressed natural gas, to raw materials such as iron ore and grains. The cost of the items destroyed, damaged or stolen is hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

The freight is not only costly, but there are many moving parts involved, such as train schedules, track management, availability of rail cars, rail car and rail track repairs, ticketing, and cargo schedules. RFID was implemented as a way to identify railway cars in a unique way but has slowly spread to additional uses, establishing itself as an important railway management solution.

1. Rail Car Tracking

Tagging rail cars with RFID tags can serve a few different purposes – either to uniquely identify rail cars for rail car visibility, preventative maintenance, or any combination of the above.

Tagging each rail car is critical to the logistics of the cargo. Each shipping container or crate could be going to different states or countries so having that information associated with each rail car is essential to delivering cargo. Today, it is reported that over 95% of North American railcars are tagged with RFID technology for identification purposes.

One of the most common uses for RFID on railways is tracking the individual rail cars or wagons in order to give enhanced visibility into where the trains are on the railway at all times. By tagging rail cars and having read stations along the track at certain intervals – it takes the guesswork out of arrival and departure times for both freight and passenger trains. Readers can be set up at intervals so that they can correctly provide directionality and speed, allowing for the calculation of remaining time.

Vehicle service records are important to maintaining due to the major concerns associated with damaged or faulty rail cars. By tagging rail cars with RFID tags, rail operators can keep track of service records in order to schedule and perform maintenance before any issues occur. Each tag can be read at reading stations, and mileage can be recorded to a database that also keeps that car’s service records. 

2. Ticketing

Rail tickets are typically checked using a visual scan or a barcode, but, due to an uptick in fraud, RFID has been deployed as a way to counteract counterfeit tickets.

In 2006, China was one of the first countries to implement single-use, paper tickets with embedded HF RFID tags. Barcodes are very easily duplicated, and, when the country was seeing about 3 billion passengers per year, railways could have been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars from counterfeit ticketing each year.

Sweden is one of the countries that are at the forefront of the RFID technology wave. A Swedish rail company, SJ, isn’t just using RFID for Oyster cards and ticketing, but they are going the extra mile by offering to store passengers’ annual train card information on their implanted RFID tag. Only available to passengers that have a pre-existing RFID implant, now ticketing can be done with a scan of someone’s hand using HF, specifically, NFC RFID technology.

3. Asset Management

Many businesses using the railways for high-value resource transport choose to tag their freight or goods with RFID. For example, by putting RFID tags on every cargo container, suitcase, or barrel of oil, it minimizes the risk of errors and reduces the amount of labor time involved in identifying and distributing the cargo.

Independently tagging and tracking cargo is typically carried out by the shipping or receiving company of the items, but can also be used by the railway company as a temporary safety measure if the cargo has to change trains, or if there are more than one company’s goods on a railcar.

Conclusion

By adding visibility, operational efficiencies, and extreme accuracy – RFID lowers labor costs and enhances customer and employee satisfaction. All these additions lower the cost and diminish the risk of transportation via railways. 

The cost to tag each wagon or rail car is tag dependent on several factors, but generally is low, and, even with the one-time hardware infrastructure cost of reading stations throughout the track, the cost to implement an RFID solution is commonly less than the value of assets on one rail car.

Ranchers, farmers, and other livestock professionals use RFID technology to track and record a variety of everyday data, such as how much a cow is being fed each day and how many male and female animals are on a ranch at a given time.

In addition to monitoring general animal locations, RFID tags can gather other valuable data to evaluate long-term patterns, such as genetic disorders, health problems, and even possible social threats in a given herd or flock. RFID tags attached to an individual animal can hold basic data, like its birth date, breeding details, and what inoculations it has received. Since tags can detect if an animal is unwell, livestock owners can address any health problems before they get out of control. Sensors can also relay valuable data about the animal’s eating habits and weight. When comparing the collected data of a group of cows, you can determine which animal in the group eats first and which cows prefer to eat with other cows. Details about the social habits of cows can also be captured thanks to RFID tags.

Our Products

Cattle and Sheep Ear Tags :

These tags are ideal for the identification, tracking, and health, history & nutrition management of cattle and sheep respectively. They are made with special TPU material and are over-molded making them more robust and durable in the outdoor environment.

They can be reusable or tamper-proof depending on the application. They are available with different chips and memory sizes including FDX and HDX animal modes and can be made in custom colors.

Glass Tag :

RFID Glass Tags are ideal for animal Identification as well as medical testing applications. They are also suitable for automotive applications such as immobilizer. These tags are available in various sizes with different chips & memory sizes. All glass tags undergo a 100% test regarding optical, mechanical, and electrical parameters prior to delivery thus guaranteeing the highest quality standards.

Watch the video to know more about these tags and their benefits.

Get in touch with us:

sales@omniatags.com

It is getting popular to apply RFID Technology in the laundry process for automated garment identification and sorting. Healthcare organizations are tagging linens and gowns to monitor usage and inventories and automate distribution. RFID reduces shrinkage and the need for staff. Industrial laundries and commercial cleaners are also using RFID technology to improve inventory control, reduce labor cost and optimize the life-cycle management of individual textiles and garments. Real-time traceability delivers more accurate and timely billing and enhances customer satisfaction. 

Omnia Technologies is specialized in the RFID technology development. With the know-how in laundry business process, Omnia provides superior RFID Laundry Tags. The laundry management system automatically tracks and manages laundry activity for customer-owned and rental uniforms and linens. The RFID technology works by electronically reading RFID tags attached to the uniforms and linens, allowing them to be automatically identified, counted and tracked. The system also facilitates sorting and validates pick-ups and deliveries at customer locations.

Benefits of using RFID in Laundry Management

This simple and transparent RFID based process, allows customers to be in complete control of their linen stock and can even inform the laundry when a new delivery is required. This can be done by simply scanning clean stock stored in linen rooms by their own staff to create an inventory that is uploaded to the cloud One of the main advantages for the customer is that they don’t have to manually count and sort the laundry which significantly reduces labour costs and increases accuracy.

• Real-time tracking of the laundry items from point of pick-up, through sorting, washing or dry-cleaning, packaging, and distribution.
• Reduced handling time at check in and check out on site and off site.
• Automatic identification of misplaced and stolen items.
• Accurate data capture regarding item life-cycle, inventory control, reusable asset sterilization control as well as automatic billing to end users.

Quality control can also reach higher levels of accuracy because the laundry is able to analyse and monitor the journey of individual items. This means it can identify when an item is reaching the end of its lifespan, so it can be replaced immediately. This results in fewer items being rejected manually during the laundry process and provides hotels with a further increased level of service efficiency.

Our Laundry Tags

As the tire industry continues to move towards full automation and Industry 4.0, the conversations surrounding RFID become more and more relevant. From easier tracking through manufacturing to waste reduction efforts, to improved automotive safety and visibility of lifetime performance, the benefits realized from RFID are virtually endless.

 RFID consists of a tiny radio transmitter (high technology transponder) and the chip that is placed inside a tire or on the outside sidewall. This transponder/chip assembly can be interrogated by a scanner that contacts it using the correct frequency and protocol. But RFID is much, much more. There are so many applications for this technology that it is staggering.

Tracking is the key

RFIDs offer an exclusive number that recognizes the tire as well as allows the tire manufacturers to track that using the manufacturing procedure, inventories, and shipping to the end-user and final point-of-sale. RFIDs can be used for tracking every tire’s history and the data can be saved in the tire manufacturer’s hosted Cloud in the maintenance management program.

RFIDs can be used for tracking the tires from picking up at the location using the retread procedure and delivery back towards the fleet. The manufacturer’s software contains data about the number of times a tire got retreaded, repairing it has got, its temperature and pressure history, tread depths, mileage, and the sources of failure in order that fleets can determine when the tire’s lifespan will end and when it should get replaced.

On the macro level, the data can be analyzed in a database for determining the finest tires as well as retreads for running in the operations and also take other well-versed decisions about age limits, retreading the number of times, and detecting problems with any particular tire and see if any improvements are required in the tire maintenance.

Our Tire Tags

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UHF Spring Tire Tag has very high performance. It is embedded into the tire so that we can track the tire electronically. Widely used in the tire factory, such as tires storing, servicing, anti-stealing, and recollecting, for inventory management. They are easy to install. It survives the high temperatures encountered in the tire curing process and is robust enough to remain operational throughout the operating life of the tire. The microchip stores the tire’s unique ID, which can be associated with the vehicle identification number. The chip can also store information about when and where the tire was made, its maximum inflation pressure, size, and so on. Information can be updated with a handheld reader.

UHF Tire Patch tag is specially designed for tire tracking and management application after the tires are manufactured. These tags are designed to meet all requirements in terms of pressure, heat, and chemical resistance in the application of contactless tracking of the tire. This tag developed to track finished tires, with a unique identification number to prevent tire theft and cloning, It will last the lifetime of the tire. It should be attached inside the sidewall of the tire with a vulcanizing agent, mainly used for bus tires, truck tires, trailer tires, etc.

Benefits

# Track and log vehicle entry/exit.

# Track vehicle movement across locations.

# Locate vehicle current location

# Optimize vehicle usage

# Can be integrated with access control barriers (Vehicles can be checked out automatically, along with an identified load. They can be checked back in again just as easily.)

# Identify a vehicle and access information about it by reading its RFID tag is a benefit for companies like car rental agencies, car dealerships, and car wash facilities. With the addition of software, these companies can pull up car records or purchases by just reading the car’s unique RFID tag.

# Controlled Costs: as warehouses can be easily tracked with minimal labor or resources

# Improved Inventory Tracking: as entire pallets can be easily scanned and accounted for without direct line of sight.