How to Implement RFID to Track RTIs - Part 2

There are different tracking technologies with their strengths and weaknesses, but which one is best suited for efficiently managing a fleet of RTIs across the entire process chain? In general, RFID, barcode, Wi-Fi and GPS technologies are the most commonly used.

Since RFID offers a particularly large number of advantages in the management of RTI pools, the technical implementation options are discussed in particular.

Tracking Technologies 

Optical identification technologies: barcode (1D), data matrix code (2D), optical character recognition (OCR) and optical object recognition (OOR) Optical identification technologies such as barcodes, 1D or 2D codes, are the most common way of identifying and tracking items today. They are a very accessible and relatively inexpensive way for marking items. The issue with barcodes, however, is that it is often difficult to automate barcode reading in high volumes – often each item must be scanned individually one by one. In tracking RTIs this kind of slow manual process steps are usually undesirable.

Also, in some cases, the barcodes are susceptible to damage, dust or dirt – a problem with RTIs, which have a long life and are heavily used during their lifecycle. Several performance tests showed that RFID readers have a significantly higher read rate and read reliability over automatic barcode scanners for bulk reading of RTIs in a gate setting.