RFID has the potential to streamline your asset tracking. Alas, for all its speed and convenience, it also has the potential to create inaccuracies by RFID readers not reading tags that you want and reading tags that you don’t.
In our experience, many inaccuracies can be traced to two sources: RFID tag placement and reader calibration.
We recommend that, if at all possible, RFID tags should be placed exclusively in the front of the data center rack. Doing so minimizes the potential of the code reader inadvertently picking up additional data (cross-reading) from “Rack B” when the intention is to count only the inventory in “Rack A.”
No RFID system is perfect
Closely related is the importance of properly calibrating the handheld RFID reader. Of course, it needs to be sensitive enough to pick up the data you want, but not so sensitive that it picks up what you don’t want.
No RFID system is perfect. Cross-reads are nearly inevitable. That’s why it’s vital that the user be trained to look for and correctly identify discrepancies and know how to correct them. The software solution you select needs to be able to quickly identify cross-reads so you can suppress them.
For another take on RFID placement, check out the post by Robots.net and of course feel free to reach out to our team at AMI if you have any questions.
Author: Tom Watson
Tom Watson is AMI’s President and CEO. He began his career in high tech in 1996, as a software engineer for his own software company. After a subsequent stint at IT Asset Management firm Micropath as senior architect for that company’s asset tracking system, he founded AMI to develop hardware asset tracking technology solutions for enterprise IT Asset Management customers.
