The use of RFID tech in reducing work overload in busy areas of business.
The necessity of RFID technology in high volume, high traffic business locations is important to lessen the excessive work effort associated to human capital. As automation and artificial intelligence integrate into various aspect of business supply chain, a key area where asset tracking technology would be of good use to reduce being overworked are RFID tags in retail and gas stations, primarily in high volume areas where transactions occur nonstop.
In key consumer market’s such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, and Tokyo where tourism connects people to product, retailers reap the rewards from foot traffic as demand is high for purchases and services. The money is good, but the effects on human capital can be exhausting as transaction may be nonstop. Service providers along major interstate lines and areas that see an abundance in travel not only need help, but must strategize labor efforts as less people are working due to the pandemic. As such, businesses like gas stations and retail stores must facilitate an ongoing consumer demand...but who pays the price? The average worker. At times where lines can be seen out the door, as well as, employees bombarded with nonstop purchases, bagging and customer interaction can leave room for discrepancies that can affect staff and consumer as the supply change may experience a reduction in employee moral, lowered shrink, accidental over-charges, accidental under-charges, human capital mistakes and customers getting angry. The more items the employee must swipe—with no breaks or help—the higher the probability of getting tired, inputting the wrong information or forgetting for scan products. Working nonstop and/or dealing with more customers can be tedious after a certain amount of time and people.
The advent of RFID is a solid movement for reducing exhaustive work load, but also improving accuracy in the supply chain from inventory management to selection and checkout. The tech has been implemented in a variety of business models like grocery stores and gas stations, but expansion in the US an abroad will take time. By tagging items and objects with RFID, the asset can be tracked to a software backend to ensure inventory management provides live data. RFID can tell the business owner if an item exists, has been sold, or moved to another destination. In return tagging could reduce costs and redundancy but also improve the supply chain by aligning consumer to product to the exit easier. If the tech were implemented in stores with high foot traffic, the excessive work load on human capital may be reduced but also moderated better to move the flow of human traffic effectively instead of the mismanaged of checkout.
As we continue to use the UPC / Barcode systems to classify products through the sales process, RFID could supersede this process with the elimination of scanning objects, bagging them and identifying purchase authentication at exit.