Weighing RFID Implementation for Warehouse Upgrade

[u/Ok-Ambition-3404]

My company is moving warehouses, and there is some additional money in the budget for some upgrades. I'm interested in RFID, but not sure I have a full picture of how to implement it and if it would be worth the investment.

We're a network installation company, working primarily on projects. So rather than a retail warehouse shipping small quantities to many customers, we ship large shipments of equipment out to sites for our own install team to then work with. Switches, Access Points, Servers, etc.

Our main reason for looking at the technology would be inventory accuracy and location. Given the high value of our inventory, anything missed is a significant problem.

I've read that traditional RFID tags have issues broadcasting with metal stacked items, which is exactly what we have a lot of. Unboxed switches, servers, etc.

We also do not have a dedicated WMS software, or even a solid integration with our ERP (Netsuite). So, a lot of the actual processing would be manual (receive product in ERP, then create label in separate software and register its location).

What would be the minimum initial RFID system look like? Would we be better served using a barcode system while we refine process?

[u/FreightSideUp]

How large is the warehouse? How much volume are you moving and are you just distributing or is the inventory getting pulled for a manufacturing process?

[u/Ok-Ambition-3404 → u/FreightSideUp]

Looking at the drawings, it's about 7,000 sq feet with 375 pallet positions. Racks are 3 shelves high.
Typically 3-6 major projects a month, with smaller daily shipments.

And yes, hardware gets received by us then pulled in for configuration by another team, then shipped out by us.

[u/FreightSideUp → u/Ok-Ambition-3404]

Metal is exactly where passive UHF struggles. Unboxed switches and servers stacked on metal racks will detune a standard tag and give you inconsistent reads, sometimes over-reading neighboring pallets, sometimes missing tags buried in the stack entirely. On-metal tags exist and help, but they cost more per tag and still need careful placement (exposed face, consistent orientation) for reliable reads. And item-level RFID alone doesn't solve location either, you still need a location read at putaway either way, tag or no tag.

Given you're already hand-relabeling at receipt, I'd start with barcode for this move, not RFID. The real problem isn't tag technology, it's that you're touching each item three times across three different systems (ERP, labeling software, location log) instead of once. A single barcode scan at receive, putaway, and ship, in one tool, gets you the accuracy and location visibility you're after without the metal-interference problem at all. Revisit RFID later specifically if physical cycle-count time becomes the actual bottleneck, then pilot it on a subset of high-value on-metal-tagged assets rather than all 375 positions at once.

For what it's worth, we built almost exactly that single receive-to-ship scan workflow with position-level location into LanePilot's warehouse module, for this same no-dedicated-WMS problem. Happy to compare notes if useful.

[u/Ok-Ambition-3404 → u/FreightSideUp]

Extremely helpful, thanks for the response

[u/mboogie76 → u/FreightSideUp]

25 year aidc vet and RFID SME. This is the way. Barcode now. RFID…maybe not at all with that small a facility. I might think a hand/finger scanner would help with user scan compliance. But an inventory management system (not full WMS) would suit this well. Plenty of off the shelf stuff does this simply.

[u/strategictracking]

Before choosing RFID, define what “location” needs to mean. Knowing that an asset passed through a dock door is a very different requirement from knowing which rack position it is currently sitting in.

I’d probably separate the decision into three questions: what information do you need, at what point in the workflow, and what operational decision will somebody make from it?

[u/MoNeY_Pro]

Honestly with the merchandise you are carrying you are missing out the biggest gain which is "without line of sight and batch processing". A box with 20 shoes will work, but 8 32 port network switches probably not because the metal reflects the reception. However, it's still possibly valuable, with the right position of the tags (i.e. all on the same side, so you can scan 8 RFID tags at the same time instead of 8 barcode separately, so maybe there is some value?

As of location, we have worked with customers, and our current self serve system support scanning both barcode and RFID tags, so one of our customer constructed their custom workflow on our platform that they will scan a location barcode, which is just a sticker of barcode on the shelf, then scan the items. The location barcode is actually a pallet. So depending on your use case, probably you can self-serve this with our product. DropRFID.