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The New Barcode

A LONG OVERDUE DIGITAL MAKEOVER

The barcode has been the cornerstone of how products are catalogued and managed since the 1950’s, but swathes of global supply chains are shifting to a form of ‘wireless barcode’ called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), adding significant real-time speed and accuracy gains to inventory management processes.

RFID

radio frequency scanning:
fast, efficient

Scanning speed:
up to 20,000
items / hour

Scanning
average store:
20 minutes

Labour cost to count
20,000 items:
£15

Barcode

optical scanning:
slow, manual labour intensive

* average values as per RFID journal stats

Scanning speed:
avg. 650
items / hour

Scanning
average store:
540 minutes

Labour cost to count
20,000 items:
£460

A Technical Overview

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is at the core of our innovation strategy, and is transforming the way businesses manage their assets. RFID tags permit the wireless and automatic transfer of data using electromagnetic pulses obtained from trackable tags that are attached to inventory. Conforming to global GS1 standards, our RFID platform eGRAB encodes each label with a unique digital identifier for real time traceability and analysis of its journey to the consumer.

These tiny labels contain embeddable microchips that can be wirelessly read in bulk (thousands in just minutes) to dramatically reduce stock taking, inventory packing and picking and warehouse management process times. They also help organisations gain insights into supply chain and product performance that has historically been the domain of online stores.