Importance of technology in business (Radio frequency identification (RFID) - Assignment Example

Due to its potential advantages such as no requirement of line of sight scanning (direct contact), RFID is increasingly being used by many organizations as an alternative to the bar code technology. RFID methods employ radio waves to automatically recognize and capture data pertaining to objects. An RFID system constitutes three parts: an RFID tag, an antenna and an RFID reader. RFID tags constitute an integrated circuit plus the antennae, charged with the duty to transmit data to a RFID reader (Li, Rida & Tentzeris, 2009).

The reader then transforms the radio waves to a data form that is more useful. Closely following is the use of a given communications interface to transmit data the information gathered from the tags to the host computer system. The gathered data resides in a database system associated with this computer system whilst awaiting analysis. RFID was mainly intended to address the inefficiency that was associated with the barcode reader. Basically, the optical nature of the bar code has often required that the lasers see the labels associated with objects.

The line of sight between the label on an object and the reader has often between impractical, difficult and at times impossible to attain in the industrial context (Tyler, 2007). Proper functioning of the bar code reader has always required that the object label and the reader are placed in positions that are relative to each other in addition to clean labels that are deprived of abrasion. Uckelmann (2012) asserts that clerks charged with store check outs have often had difficulty in making sure that a bar code reader is able to read the bar code associated with a given product.

RFID device provides a tracking approach where the position of the product to be tracked does not have to be relative to that of the scanner. Using RFID, a client inside a supermarket could place his items in a basket then set the entire bag on the scanner. The scanner