chrispeng [ad_1]
(1) RFID system selection
The choice of RFID system is the basis of the application. According to the energy supply mode of the radio frequency tag, RFID tags can be divided into active, passive and semi-active tags. Active tags use the energy of the battery in the card, and the recognition distance is longer, up to tens of meters, but its life is limited and the price is relatively high; passive tags do not contain batteries, and use the electromagnetic field energy emitted by the reader as their own Energy, its light weight, small size, life span can be very long, very cheap, but its launch distance is limited. According to the working frequency, that is, the frequency used by the reader to send wireless signals, RFID systems can generally be divided into four types: low frequency, high frequency, ultra high frequency and microwave. There are two main low-frequency frequencies: 125kHz and 134.2kHz. The high-frequency frequency is mainly 13.56MHz, the UHF frequency is between 860MHz and 960MHz, and 2.45GHz to 5.8GHz is a microwave frequency. Low-frequency systems are mainly used in short-distance, low-cost applications, high-frequency systems are used in applications that need to transmit a large amount of data, and ultra-high-frequency systems are used in applications that require long read and write distances and high read and write speeds.
Active and passive have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the four frequencies have their own characteristics. Different combinations are suitable for different products and environments. The application of RFID in the jewelry industry mainly has two aspects: warehouse management and personnel management. To select an RFID system suitable for jewelry, you must consider the characteristics of jewelry, business requirements, and management cost control:
1. Consider from the characteristics of jewelry
Jewelry is a metal product, which means that RFID tags will be used in metal environments. At this stage, there are three methods for marking metal parts. One is the method of isolating the metal and the label used in high frequency and low frequency, and the cost is relatively high: the other is to design the label reasonably so that the label antenna is at an appropriate distance from the metal surface; The third type is to attach the label, including the method of hanging the label and carrying the label on the non-metallic tray or container of the label. Since there is a brand with jewelry information printed on the jewelry, the label can be directly attached to the brand, so various frequencies can be applied, and the detuning of the RFID tag on the metal surface does not affect the application.
2. Consider from business needs
Whether it is warehouse management or personnel management, it is necessary to read a large number of tags at the same time in all directions. This requires that the RFID system must have a faster reading speed, and there is no read label and no directionality restriction. Although the low-frequency system has no directional limitation, the reading and writing speed is slow. The reading and writing speed of UHF and microwave systems can meet the requirements, but there are some directional limitations. Only the high frequency can meet the requirements in the reading speed, and there is no reading. Take the directional development of the label.
3. Consider from the perspective of management cost control
The active tag has a long recognition distance, but its life span is only 2 to 5 years, the price is relatively high, and the maintenance is inconvenient. Passive tags are light in weight, small in size, and have a very long life of up to 15 years and are cheap, but the reading distance is limited. Although the application of active tags can reduce the number of readers installed, its own price and maintenance costs are much higher than passive tags, and the weight and volume of active tags are not suitable for use on jewelry brands.
Comprehensive analysis of various aspects, the high-frequency passive RFID system has the characteristics of small tag size, low cost, high reading speed, moderate reading distance, and strong ability to resist metal interference. It is suitable for application in the jewelry industry.
(2) Application in warehouse management
1. Application in warehousing management
After the jewellery arrives in the warehouse, the finished jewellery and the raw materials are handled separately. For finished jewelry, first record the weight, purity, grade and other jewelry information on the national inspection certificate and inventory information such as the warehouse, cargo area, shelf and stacking position, and the RFID label number used on the jewelry, and then paste the label on the printed product. Behind the cards with the same jewelry information, finally hang the cards on the jewelry and pack them into the warehouse. For jewelry raw materials, first check whether the quantity, weight, purity and grade of the raw materials meet the data provided by the supplier, and then write the correct data together with inventory information and label numbers into the database, and finally on the container containing the jewelry raw materials put on label.
2. Application in outbound management
When jewelry is shipped out of the warehouse, the information in the label can be read into the information system through the reader installed at the door of the warehouse, and its purpose, time and place of arrival from the warehouse can be written and uploaded to the information system. The inventory records in the system perform related operations. This makes it easy to grasp all the whereabouts of the jewelry that has been out of the library.
3. Application in inventory positioning
Jewelry is small in size, once it is put into storage, it will be very difficult to find it. Jewelry is also very expensive, and loss of any one will cause considerable losses. Therefore, accurate inventory positioning plays an important role in jewelry inventory management. In order to achieve precise positioning, it is necessary to set a sufficient number of readers in the warehouse according to the reading distance of the tag to form a three-dimensional system. When you need to search for jewelry, you can find the location of a specific jewelry by activating the reader, which greatly reduces the search range. The application of RFID technology in inventory location also makes inventory counting automated.
(3) Application in personnel management
Everyone who enters the jewelry store will hold a label, which is divided into two categories: employee labels and customer labels. The employee label is printed with the employee’s own photo, name, department, position and other text identification. The data corresponding to the label also contains the employee’s authority level. On the customer label, only the text mark of the customer type is printed. When the person holding the label enters a specific entrance, the RFID reader reads the information on the label, identifies it, and compares the authority level represented by the label with The minimum access level set for the entrance is compared. If the tag level is higher than the minimum access level, it will be automatically registered in the access control system, otherwise the terminal will issue an error alarm. Because the reader reads data very fast and can read multiple tags at the same time, there is no need to pause when passing through the entrance, and the action is completely free. When leaving, the reader reads the tag information again and registers the time of departure in the access control system. The personnel management system uses the tag’s one entry and one exit as a normal cycle to make judgments.
In addition to the application in the access control system. RFID system can also be applied to employee location and customer tracking. Install the reader on the counter or booth that needs to be monitored. As long as employees and customers pass through the sensing area during work, the reader will transmit the received data from the terminal to the information system. After processing, it will be stored in the database server. The RFID employee location and customer tracking system can achieve the following functions:
1. Employee query function, real-time query the current distribution of employees and query the location of any employee at a certain moment, the size of the query area is determined by the distribution of readers.
2. Customer tracking function, real-time query the current customer distribution and query the location of any employee at a certain moment, and record the movement track of any customer, the size of the query area is determined by the distribution of the reader.
3. Attendance function, classified statistics of employees’ working times, working hours and other information, which is convenient for assessment.
4. Employee scheduling function, set a ratio of the number of customers and employees. When the ratio of the number of customers to employees at a certain counter exceeds the set value, the system will issue a warning signal to find relatively idle employees and pass the information to the department head to help Even if department heads conduct personnel scheduling, they try their best to meet customer needs.
(4) The advantages of RFID technology applied to the jewelry industry
1. Optimize inventory management
The small size and high price of jewellery make inventory has always been a major problem in jewellery logistics management. Most of the current jewelry inventory management uses barcodes as its intelligent method. Although its degree of intelligence is greatly improved than before, it still requires a lot of manpower and material resources to invest in inventory management. Replacing the current bar code system with an RFID system not only eliminates a lot of manual operations, but also reduces the risk of errors while improving efficiency. The installation of RFID readers in the warehouse can also achieve precise inventory positioning and inventory automation, which greatly improves the efficiency of inventory management. The application of RFID technology in inventory management can effectively improve inventory management efficiency and reduce inventory management costs.
2. Facilitate data mining and decision support
a. Provide more accurate raw data
Data collection is the basis of data mining, and data quality issues have seriously affected the application of data mining technology. The application of RFID technology can effectively reduce measurement errors and data omissions during data collection, improve data quality, and provide more accurate raw data for data mining.
b. Guarantee timeliness
Both data mining and decision support pay attention to timeliness. If the data is out of date, the data-based models and patterns are also out of date, and the significance of the results obtained will be greatly reduced. The RFID system can read multiple tags at the same time, which can slow down the data aging caused by slow manual operation in the past, so that the data mining system and decision support system can obtain various data in almost real time.
c. Provide new data mining objects
After applying the RFID system, the information system can collect new data such as the frequency of the appearance of customers in a specific location, the movement trajectory of the customers, and the stay time of the customers in different locations. Through data mining of these data, it is possible to obtain new information that helps decision-making. For example, statistics can be made on the frequency of customers appearing around the counters and booths and the time spent by customers in a certain period, so as to obtain the hot jewelry that customers pay attention to, and provide a basis for decision-making for targeted procurement and marketing.
(5) Case analysis
1. Project background:
The Hong Kong Jewelers Association decided in 2006 to introduce RFID systems to manage jewelry for its 400 member companies. The purpose of adopting this system is: to achieve item-level jewelry management, to realize rapid inventory, rapid quotation and intelligent sales management of jewelry, so as to enhance the core competitiveness, management ability and service level of the member companies of the Hong Kong Jewelry Merchants Association.
2. Selection process:
In order to accelerate the development and application of RFID jewelry management system, the Hong Kong Jewelry Association commissioned its member company (a jewelry manufacturer in Mainland China) to form an RFID jewelry management system project team with the cooperation of three well-known jewelry management software companies in Hong Kong. The software development work of the project has been completed. The difficulty lies in the integration of the hardware system (the key is the choice of readers). The project team puts forward the following requirements for the required readers:
a. Fixed reader: requires high power, good anti-collision performance, and low power consumption for jewelry inventory.
b. Mobile reader: fast and stable reading and writing speed, used for jewelry quotation.
c. Countertop reader: used for data entry of electronic tags.
d. All readers must be reasonably priced.
In view of this, the project team has successively tested the readers of many companies in the United States, Canada, Singapore and Taiwan. The test results were not satisfactory. The main problems are:
a. The anti-collision performance of the fixed reader/writer under test is poor. The project team initially required that the readers under test can parse 150 electronic tags stably, but none of them achieved the desired results. Even if the performance requirements were reduced to 100 or even 75, the readers still could not achieve stable resolution.
b. The tested mobile reader/writer is slow in reading and writing data. The mobile reader adopts the solution of the reader with CF interface connected to the PDA. In the application of RFID jewelry management system, there are more data information in the electronic tag. Therefore, the speed of the reader to read the data in the electronic tag and Stability requirements are high. However, the reading and writing speed of the tested readers cannot meet the expectations of the project team. At the same time, when used on the PDA platform, the tested readers often cause the PDA operating system to crash.
c. The tested tabletop reader/writer has a slow data reading and writing speed and is sensitive to the discreteness of the card.
d. The price of each reader under test is falsely high and the power consumption is large.
After the project team contacted our company, our company proposed a solution based on YX9291T high-power reader/writer, YX9036CF mobile reader/writer and YX9036SR countertop reader/writer according to the needs of the project team. Each has the following characteristics:
1), YX9291T high-power fixed reader:
RF output power above 4W;
Fully support all mainstream electronic tags;
Excellent multi-tag anti-collision processing performance (the project team used 150 electronic tags to conduct anti-collision performance tests, and the results were satisfactory);
The typical label resolution speed is 30-50 sheets/sec;
Single 12V power supply, low power consumption, support multiple readers to connect to the network;
2), YX9037CF mobile reader:
Advanced electronic tag anti-collision processing algorithm, high reading rate;
Built-in transceiver antenna, support CF II specification, virtual serial port mode;
It can be directly connected to PDA to facilitate data entry management;
Use special hardware to accelerate tag data reading (the actual test reading speed of the project team is satisfactory);
Stable and reliable operation under the PDA platform (the stability of the project team’s actual long-term repeated testing is satisfactory);
3), YX9037SR countertop reader:
Single 12V power supply, advanced electronic tag anti-collision processing algorithm, high reading rate;
Built-in transceiver antenna;
Support RS232 interface, multiple readers to connect to the network;
4) The above three readers have a good price/performance ratio, and all provide dynamic link library (DLL) and demo software source code to support secondary development.
3. Implementation results:
Using our company’s YX9291T, YX9037CF, YX9037SR three readers and corresponding antennas, the RFID jewelry management system trial operation user feedback is as follows:
a. Speed up jewelry inventory: the inventory time for 6000 pieces of jewelry has been reduced from 4 working days to 0.5 working days;
b. Improve jewelry quotation efficiency: The solution of using CF interface reader and PDA to transition from the traditional dedicated and professional quotation to ordinary employees can make quotations, which greatly saves the human resources of various jewelry companies and reduces the risk of misjudgment;
c. Realize intelligent sales management: using smart shelves, it can automatically identify the number of jewels in the shelves, reflect the sales situation of the day in real time, and provide great convenience for management planning.
The results of the trial operation of the RFID jewelry management system have been widely praised by the member companies of the Hong Kong Jewelers Association.
[ad_2]
