The warehousing industry faces significant labor shortages. Prompted by the pandemic and by an overall tight labor market, these shortages can cause a world of trouble, making it difficult to maintain the expedited pace of the modern supply chain. The implications can be severe, including delays in order fulfillment along with a heightened risk of errors.
While strong recruitment, hiring, and training practices lay the groundwork for maintaining a reliable workforce, even the most efficiently managed warehouses can hit capacity limits when seasonal demand spikes or market conditions rapidly shift. These fluctuations often require sudden increases in staffing, leaving organizations scrambling to find and train new hires quickly — a challenge that can disrupt operations and drive up costs.
The best way to bridge the gap? Leveraging cutting-edge solutions designed to improve efficiency. Yes, innovative options such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) can help, but they should be accompanied by strategic solutions that help human employees do their best work.
Barcodes and RFID solutions have a powerful role to play in this effort, elevating efficiency while also easing some of the burdens traditionally associated with warehouse jobs. By automating time-consuming processes and providing real-time insights, these tracking and identification technologies enable teams to focus on higher-value activities and reduce errors, all while uncovering new efficiencies across a wide range of facilities.
The Role of RFID Technology in Addressing Labor Shortages
Most people are familiar with barcodes, which offer excellent scanning capabilities and can help streamline inventory management. Capable of encoding information via black lines and white spaces, these highly visual representations allow for swift scanning and product identification. However, many organizations are now supplementing barcodes with radio frequency identification (RFID) solutions, which promises even greater efficiency while avoiding barcodes’ line-of-sight limitations.
Featuring tags and readers, RFID solutions rely on radio waves to transmit critical data. These powerful, yet adaptable systems can be custom-built to accommodate a variety of use cases, going beyond inventory management to include high-value asset tracking and even access control.
In warehouses, these solutions address labor shortages by limiting the need for time-consuming manual scans. With tags automatically capturing data (often at high speeds), real-time updates can be expected, thereby boosting operational efficiency and even freeing up warehouse workers to handle other critical tasks. Meanwhile, RFID also streamlines picking and packing, offering valuable support so that employees can find necessary items or pallets with ease.
4 Key Benefits of RFID and Barcodes in Warehouses
Although RFID solutions are valuable, there is definitely still a place for barcodes in the modern warehouse. Barcodes tend to be more cost-effective and may also prove helpful when interference or other issues limit RFID’s impact. That being said, barcodes carry their own risks, with unreadable barcodes potentially breaking the chain of data. These issues can be addressed through barcode verification.
When it comes to managing labor shortages, implementing the right mix of RFID and barcodes — or the solution that best fits your operational needs — can reduce the strain on employees by cutting down on manual tasks, improving accuracy, and enabling faster decision-making.
Today’s facilities have the flexibility to deploy one or both of these solutions, tailoring their approach to specific operational priorities or use cases. Whether used independently or in tandem, RFID and barcodes offer enhanced scalability and segmentation. Key benefits to consider include:
Automation of Repetitive Tasks
RFID tags and readers play a crucial role in driving the push toward automated warehouse solutions. In addition to helping avoid time-consuming manual processes via real-time tracking, RFID systems integrate wonderfully with other automated opportunities, such as AGVs and conveyor systems. These systems can also impact stock counts, which have historically been a significant source of inefficiency and errors due to the high likelihood of miscounts.
This automation allows warehouses to maintain high efficiency and productivity even with a smaller workforce.
Improved Inventory Accuracy and Management
Real-time visibility represents one of the most exciting advantages of RFID and barcodes. These solutions offer instant insight into inventory levels and item locations, even tracking goods as they move throughout the supply chain. These insights allow warehouse leaders to make informed decisions, helping them address potential labor bottlenecks and prevent stockouts or other disruptions.
With accurate, real-time data at their fingertips, leaders can proactively adjust their strategies, ensuring they can quickly adapt to unexpected challenges such as demand fluctuations or supply chain disruptions.
Operational Efficiency and Optimization
Downtime and bottlenecks have long impeded overall efficiency within warehouse environments, and with the ongoing issue of labor shortages, the need for streamlined operations is more pressing than ever. RFID and barcode technology provide real-time updates and enable workflows to be optimized, significantly reducing the reliance on manual labor for tasks like inventory checks and item tracking.
By automating these processes, warehouses can operate efficiently even with a reduced workforce. This automation not only reduces the workload for existing employees but also frees up labor to focus on higher-value activities that require critical thinking or specialized skills.
Quality Control and Customer Satisfaction
Quality control represents one of the most concerning issues brought about by recent labor shortages, as it can be difficult to maintain high standards when fewer employees are available. Many exciting technologies promise to address these issues (including, for some facilities, machine vision solutions), but RFID and barcodes are among the easiest to implement. By automating key processes, these technologies help warehouses maintain quality even with a reduced workforce, reducing the strain on employees and improving overall efficiency.
By streamlining overall inventory management, these systems can help to address many common issues that lead to reduced quality. For example, warehouses that handle perishable goods may rely on RFID systems to verify storage conditions or track expiration dates. This limits the potential for spoilage or other sources of damage, ensuring that high standards are upheld even with fewer employees.
High quality and efficiency both play heavily into overall customer satisfaction, and, when RFID and barcodes are used strategically, both priorities are well within reach. From batch tracking to automated alerts, many opportunities support quality control without adding bottlenecks within the modern warehouse.
Examples of RFID and Barcodes in Warehousing
Many use cases reveal the far-reaching value of RFID and barcodes in today’s warehouses, especially in addressing challenges like labor shortages. Heavily utilized across many industries for tracking pallets and shipments, these solutions influence:
- Automotive. Capable of tracking both individual components and entire assemblies, RFID solutions prompt quick identification and can dramatically improve efficiency in production lines and inventory management. Similarly, barcodes can drive important insights regarding part numbers or sequencing.
- Foods and beverages. Crucial for optimizing FIFO (first-in, first-out) inventory management, RFID systems can help to monitor temperature and humidity. This promotes product freshness and strengthens regulatory compliance.
- Fulfillment centers. Streamlining order fulfillment within the fast-paced eCommerce sector, RFID and barcode solutions shape modern picking and packing strategies. Offering unique identifiers, these systems ensure that employees know where to go and how to transfer goods between locations.
- Pharmaceutical and medical devices. RFID is widely used for asset tracking within the healthcare sector, but it also has a valuable role to play in tracking inventory such as medications or surgical tools. These solutions improve traceability, thereby promoting compliance with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).
Warehousing Challenges Addressed by RFID and Barcodes
As labor shortages continue to challenge organizations — and as labor costs continue to increase — RFID technology and barcode solutions promise to help current employees do more with less. These solutions can help organizations gain an edge in a competitive environment, all while avoiding the inefficiencies and errors that can arise from over-reliance on manual processes.
While line-of-sight scanning with barcodes can present challenges, their cost-effectiveness makes them a valuable tool for many enterprises. To overcome these limitations, businesses are increasingly integrating RFID solutions, which enable data capture without the need for direct line of sight.
Although we have finally begun to move past the fallout of the pandemic, labor remains a huge challenge for many organizations. Add seasonal concerns to the mix, and it is easy to see why automated solutions feel like such a necessity. Thankfully, RFID and barcodes provide a solid starting point, offering a cost-effective way to boost both accuracy and efficiency.
Improve Your Warehouse Operations Today
RFID and barcodes could play a powerful role in streamlining operations within your warehouse, but implementing the right solution is crucial — not to mention, strategic design, development, and deployment. Look to the experts at Peak Technologies to oversee this process every step of the way. We offer RFID services that can help you realize the full advantages of today’s most cutting-edge solutions. Get in touch today to learn more.
